U RBAN PLANNING for a healthful environment involves water, sewage, refuse, air, roads, churches, schools, open spaces, houses, money, and, last but not least, it involves people. People demand healthful facilities only to the extent that they are educated. Too few, for example, are sufficiently educated to demand sewers in a housing development rather than septic tanks. And who is to educate them? County commissioners, mayors, councilmen, sanitary district commissioners, and similar public officials have not been trained as environmental hygienists, as planning experts, or as educators, even though they are saddled with such responsibilities. The talents of educator and community leader are needed urgently to help in promulgating water, sewage, and refuse disposal facilities, and well-planned housing. To provide for these facilities in a master plan of development is to use today's decisions to protect the interests of a city's children and grandchildren, as well as the living generation. An organized plan of public improvement clearly and logically presented, so as to be understood by civic leaders and the public, has an infinitely greater chance of achievement than an unorganized approach. A classic result of inadequate planning is the widespread use of septic tanks and private wvells in housing areas. More are being installed every day with the knowledge of engineers, yes; but with their consent, no. Why does this happen? Consider a hypothetical situation: Suppose a large development is being constructed on the fringe of a city. The usual services will be needed. The community's water and sewer mains at the corporate limits may be inadequate to serve the fringe area. How are financial arrangements made to provide service equitably? Sometimes the community will refuse to talk about extension of services unless the fringe area agrees to annexation. Or the community agrees to provide water-supply service but cannot or will not provide sewer service, with the result that septic systems make enemies of neighbors, even though the drinking water is safe. In this situation, the engineer-planner, who doubles as a salesman with a major in public relations, will strive, if extensions of services are feasible, to satisfy the city that it is not giving something for nothing and to convince the fringe-area people that they are not being fleeced. Many fringe areas which a few years ago were rather sparsely settled are now booming communities, with large, modern shopping centers. Where water and sewerage facilities are inadequate for present structures, it is reasonable to require that the facilities be expanded before authorizing new construction. Such a decision may be predicated on (a) individual well-water supplies being threatened by pollution, (b) individual sewage disposal systems either overflowing and causing visible hazards or contaminating ground water supplies, or (c) areas having sewers but no sewage treatment. An editorial, entitled "Day by Day," in The Salisbury Times, Salisbury, Md., May 30, 1963, had this to say: The health department is conducting an antipollution campaign that will be effeictive Mr. Brown is chief, bureau of environmental hygiene, Maryland State Department of Health. This article is based on his speech at a workshop session of the Conference of State Sanitary Engineers in Washington, D.C., June 26, 1963.