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01':12""" ) u ,.b~ "; ~~ . - 5 ~ involve management of public waters. Highway construction affects water flow and can provide for impoundment of water and erosion protection, University experiment stations, extension services and engineering de- partments do extensive water resource research and public education work. Planning and development agencies do water resource studies to assist in locating industries and maintaining water supplies. Other examples could be cited. These programs make a significant contribution to the total water resource development and regulation programs of a state, It is, however, beyond the scope of the present paper to go in to any detail re- garding the work of these agencies. Some Major Future Problems At a prior Missouri Basin Inter-Agency Committee meeting -- the one held March 20 last year at St. Joseph, Missouri -- Irving Fox of Re- sources for the Future raised the issue I want to consider now. The ques- tion we face in the water resource field was expressed as follows: "How, in this complex society, can we continue to realize the benefits which we have accepted as accruing from local people making the decisions and tak- ing the responsibility for the affairs which directly affect them?" In considering the increasing federal activities in several fields of water resource administration traditionally considered to be the domain of state, local or private agencies, he concluded that the states could, if they wish, maintain important responsibilities in all of these areas. What is involved is for the states to retain the initiative by maintaining the capacity to make their own decisions and assist localities in making decisions even where new or expanded federal programs are involved. I would like to consider four areas in which the states may have to take positive steps to expand their activities if they are to retain this initiative. Two of these areas of increasing importance cut across all other water resource activities: the collection and analysis of basic information regarding water resources and comprehensive planning and coordination of programs. The other two are more specific areas: the development of water supply facilities and pollution control. Basic Water Resource Data and Research One of the most pressing problems facing the states in their ef- ~Iforts to expand their water resource programs to meet new needs is the lack of adequate basic information about present and foreseeable water supplies and the demands that will be put on them. That there is this lack is hardly a new or startling discovery. Yet it needs to be empha- sized again, since the inadequacies in basic information are still present. This particular area where added state efforts would seem to be necessary is considered first not necessarily because it is most im- portant but because it is fundamental to all others. If wise decisions are to be made regarding present operations land future developments of water resource programs of all kinds, there must first be available sufficient information regarding the physical basis for the decisions. Other factors, such as population growth and movement, industrial expansion or modification, new agricultural tech- niques, competing demands and the desires and wishes of the people of