Excerpts from the report: The Potomac basin embraces an area of about 14,600 square miles. It includes the District of Columbia and parts of Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It has a population of nearly 3 million people. The beauty of the streams, fields, and forests of the basin has made it a recreational area for increasing thousands of people. The terrain of the basin varies from the flat Coastal Plains to the mountainous eastern slope of the Alleghenies. Between these extremes are the rolling country of the Piedmont Plateau, the Great Valley of the Shenandoah, and the Appalachian Highlands. This report is based on a study of the water and related land resources in the Potomac River basin and presents that part of the comprehensive plan for the prevention or control of floods and the development and conservation of the water and related land resources with respect to present and future needs in the upstream portions of the basin. The Department of Agriculture developed information on: (1) trends in agricultural development and their relation to present and future water needs for agriculture, (2) erosion as it relates to the sediment and pollution problems, (3) local needs for water control and management in the upstream areas, and (4) the potential of upstream development for meeting these problems.