When I accepted your kind invitation to appear before your group to discuss the engineering aspects of water quality control programs with federal assistance, the exact title of my talk had not been selected, or at least was not communicated to me. Upon being informed of the title “How to Finance and Engineer a Water Quality Control Program with Federal Assistance” the first thing I did was to tear up my outline and go back to the drawing board, so to speak. First, I am probably not qualified to discuss “financing” in its true sense – we generally leave that to a finance consultant. Second, the availability of a federal grant should not affect the engineering of a project – meaning the actual job of preparing working drawings and specifications for construction purposes. Having analyzed the subject from an engineer’s viewpoint and eliminated most of what I had planned to say, I asked a number of our clients – councilmen, city attorneys and city engineers – what they would expect to hear with such a title. There was a fairly good consensus that I should discuss – 1. What is available in federal assistance. 2. What needs to be done locally to quality for federal assistance. 3. What special factors must be considered with federal assistance.