The President

The White House

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I am pleased to submit to you From Sea To Shining Sea, A Report on the American Environment-Our Natural Heritage. This report has been prepared by the President's Council on Recreation and Natural Beauty. It has several major objectives. One is to outline progress in environmental improvement programs since the 1965 White House Conference on Natural Beauty. Another is to present proposals and recommendations which will stimulate Federal, State, local, and private action to further enhance the quality of our environment and the beauty of our Nation. A third objective is to present a guide for action by local officials, professional men and women, citizen groups of many kinds, and individuals.

In sum, Mr. President, we hope the report will generally advance the efforts made by you and by Mrs. Johnson to improve the quality of the physical environment for the benefit of the American people. From Sea To Shining Sea is a monument to those efforts and a record of impressive accomplishment achieved under your vigorous leadership. It is also a challenge for the future, a comprehensive statement of environmental needs and goals, a charter to guide environmental quality programs for Administrations yet to come.

These needs and the national response to these needs must inevitably extend over a period of many years. The resolution of such problems will ultimately depend on action, attitudes, and costs borne by every individual citizen, by volunteer organizations, by thousands of businesses and industries, and by governments at all levels.

The issue raised by the report is: what kind of environment do we want and do we need? From this perspective, the report does not conclude that the Nation should renew the cities at the expense of the wilderness or that we should preserve the wilderness at the expense of

the cities. The report's conclusion is that a proper environment for Americans requires that we do both. Therefore, the proposals and recommendations contained herein represent a statement of long-term, comprehensive goals for the Nation. The Council does not necessarily expect to begin action on all these at once, nor does it establish costs or priorities. Rather, we hoped to provide a perspective useful to everyone concerned with environmental issues and a way of relating those issues one to another.

The emphasis on long-range goals, Mr. President, does not mean that we have no expectations of immediate benefits from the publication of this report. On the contrary, much already has been gained through the agreement achieved among the members of the Council in preparing this report. We heartily recommend that the policies and perspectives set forth by the Council be adopted by other Federal agencies and by other levels of government.

The report can lead to more and better use of existing tools for environmental improvement. It can lead to wider application of tested techniques. It can mobilize public support for new measures. It is the Council's hope that the report will help stimulate further activities by increasing numbers of Americans. Only then can our goal of significant improvement in the day-to-day surroundings of every American become a reality.

PREFACE

IN THE MIDDLE YEARS of the 20th century, many Americans became aware that the celebrated beauty of their land, proclaimed for generations by poets, artists, and writers was seriously threatened by the very forces that had created an unprecedented abundance of material goods. No longer was it possible to take for granted the beauty of flowing rivers, pastoral valleys, spacious plains, majestic forests, and pristine mountains.

The gleam of alabaster cities became dimmed by palls of smog and festering slums. Rivers and streams were turned into sewage conduits. Strip mining despoiled the countryside. Mountains of garbage accumulated around the cities. The omnipresent bulldozers, clearing the way for new highways, houses and factories to accommodate a burgeoning population, scraped bare millions of acres of hills, woods, and valleys until it seemed that there would one day be little but pavement and monotonous sprawling suburbs from sea to shining sea. The emotions aroused in many Americans by this prospect were deeply rooted in a love for the land and a conviction, reaching back into history, that beauty somehow is an essential quality of the American environment, a part of each American's heritage.

The need to incorporate nature's principles of harmony, proportion, and vitality in the design of towns and cities had been proclaimed in the early years of the Republic by Thomas Jefferson.

"Communities should be planned," he wrote, "with an eye to the effect made upon the human spirit by being continuously surrounded with a maximum of beauty."

A century later President Theodore Roosevelt, who led the first movement to conserve the Nation's resources for the future, recognized that one of America's vital resources was its natural beauty. "There is nothing more practical in the end," he declared, "than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions of man."

A generation later Franklin D. Roosevelt led a second

wave of action to restore the productivity and beauty of farm and forest.

In the 1960's, as the threats to the continent's environmental quality became increasingly apparent, President John F. Kennedy said: "I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future."

In his Message on the Natural Beauty of Our Country on February 8, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed these principles:

We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit. The President called for action on a wide range of environmental problems and concluded his message with a call for a White House Conference on Natural

Beauty, which was held in Washington on May 24 and 25, 1965. In reporting to the President on the recommendations of that conference, the Chairman, Laurance S. Rockefeller, said:

You charged us to think of natural beauty as an integral part. of our everyday lives. The participants so responded. They recognized the importance of small steps-the planting of trees and flowers-but they also recognized that natural beauty will be fundamentally determined by how we treat our air and water, how we use our land and how we build upon it. We had to be concerned, in short, with the total quality of the environment.

The conference provided stimulation and support for a multitude of activities designed to improve the environment. The Governors of 35 States summoned statewide natural beauty conferences. Cities and counties