GONELD-FALTLAL marily for freeways, but will probably include existing rail routes. Consideration should be given to operating factors affecting scheduled helicopter operations, including air traffic patterns. , Potential sources of water supply, the effect on other potential sources of developing one source of supply, and the effects of various alternative sewer systems on the different water-supply sources should be analyzed. Competition with other metropolitan centers for distant sources of supply must be considered. If more than one system appears desirable, the study should cover possibilities of interconnecting the systems to permit bypassing enemy damage. Possible methods of sewering the various nuclei and those of their surroundings planned for close development should be studied. Existing sewer systems and existing and planned water-supply systems must be given adequate consideration. Dispersion of treatment facilities through use of package plants might provide ameliorating safeguards against the heavy contamination that could result from successful attack on a single integrated system. Package plants would probably be more economical, too, if a full-bodied pattern of protected open spaces were developed. Although most communications lie in the sphere of private enterprise, the vital importance of good transportation and communications to any dispersed pattern of activity is so great that special studies might be undertaken in conjunction with private utilities to make certain that needless handicaps are not imposed on the development of communi- cations. Reservation of selected hilltops for public-utility television relay stations is not an impossibility. Image-carrying telephone devices exist now in prototype stage; newer inventions to speed communication are a strong possibility. A classification and evaluation of the activities in the central (core) area should be made to determine those for which a central location is so clearly in the public interest that central underground shelter should be provided them. These evaluations will involve estimates of target value, alternative facilities, recuperability, economic and physical ties to other core activities, and comparable factors relating to the need for a central location as opposed to the need for continuity of operation during and after attack. At the present time in the Washington area decisions of this kind are actually being made by the heads of federal departments and agencies about to construct new buildings. Thefirst decisions to move to dispersed sites were those of the National Security Agency and the Atomic Energy Commission. The Central Intelligence Agency, the Weather Bureau, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Bureau-of-standardsfol owed suit. The State Department and the Court of Claims plan to build in the core area. Congress is now alerted to the pos- sible need for some check on the discretioo n findividual agencies. A Washington area regional plan for metropolitan distribution of key federal activities should probably be de- cided on by the Congress, with some voice given to agency heads and the District Commissioners, and with preliminary staff studies conducted by the Office of Defense Mobili- zation, the Area Development Division of the Department of Commerce, the National Capital Regional Planning Council, and the National Capital Planning Commission. However, the area of jurisdiction of the National Capital Regional Planning Council, as established at present by the Congress, is not large enough to cover an appropriate dis- persed development district for Washington, nor are the presently constituted planning agencies closely conversant with problems of nonmilitary defense and reduction of urban vulnerability. Whenexisting core activities have been grouped into those that might move outward and those that should remain, a general allocation study should be made to determine location and distribution of the moved agencies throughout the dispersed development district. Something of this kind has already been started by the Office of Defense MobiliORO-R-17 (App B) 87