ALMOST 250 years ago Richard Pococke, obsessive traveller and perceptive topographical observer, described Waterford as having "the finest quay in Europe, except that of Messina in Sicily".
The question now being asked, approaching the millennium, is what has the city made of this great asset and what are the future plans for it?
If Pococke today crossed the Suir by the city's only bridge and proceeded along the spacious quay he might not only be astonished but also vitriolic in print (as he could be).
Not just the heavy local traffic but also up to 4,000 tourists each day on their way to summer holiday destinations in the south-west pass this way.
They encounter a sprawling linear riverside car-park, interspersed with, in turn, a bedraggled warehouse building, a garish (if typical) petrol station, sundry temporary service huts and ESB sub-stations.
Halfway along they come to the city's proud Clock Tower, a landmark for more than 130 years. Inexplicably and confusingly, the hands on each of the four dials are stuck at 12 o'clock.
Even worse, slap up against the rear of the tower is an ugly public toilets building of a type which has happily been replaced in many other towns and cities.
Further along this "broad and commodious thoroughfare" (Francis Guy's South of Ireland Handbook, circa 1900), the visitor encounters a huge and ungainly crane and more unprepossessing sheds.
Surely, Pococke or any curious tourist might ask, there must be integrated and sensitive plans to restore and develop the elegance of these fine quays, well described by Muirhead's Blue Guide to Ireland in 1949 as "the centre of the animation of Waterford".
Inquiring in the columns of the local press, however, he will find evidence of a long-simmering controversy.
Bus Eireann proposes to relocate its main city bus station to the quays, from the train station across the river. And Waterford Harbour Commissioners want to fill in a section of the river for an expanded car-park.
Challenging these proposals is the Save the Quay Committee, made up of representatives of An Taisce, Waterford Civic Trust, some planners, architects and Quay traders.
Their vision of turning the quays into a landscaped public space and attractive amenity area is demonstrated in a scale model constructed by local architectural technology students and displayed publicly in a city shopping centre.
There are pragmatic arguments supporting the provision of an improved bus depot and better car-parking facilities in Waterford. But the central issue is whether the city can afford the piecemeal commercial development of its premier defining feature, the extended river frontage of almost a mile from which all visitors inevitably derive their first and lasting impression of Waterford.
The river here is broad and majestic, almost 1,000 feet wide and providing what the novelist William Thackeray acknowledged as "very imposing" views.
Yet a 1978 report by Prof Michael Bannon of UCD asserted that "one of the almost universally agreed causes of disinvestment in Waterford is the appearance of the Quays".
It also remarked that the quays "must rank as one of the greatest potential amenities within any north European city ... It is essential that there is an integrated approach to their future development..."
The architectural scale model suggests a marina (also proposed by the Harbour Commissioners), a tree-lined walk and linear park, an outdoor performance space around the Clock Tower, a pontoon seafood restaurant, water-based activities, a glass market building, and carefully limited car parking.
The planning process is in the throes of getting to grips with the commercial development proposals. The environmentalist alternatives would involve extensive purchases of quayside land from its owners, co-ordinated and integrated planning, and long-term deliberate targeting of substantial resources towards the goal of creating an unrivalled public space and tourist attraction along the quays.
Waterford is prospering, industrious, buzzing with energy in construction and commerce, and tremendously excited by the prospect of the Tour de France caravanserai visiting the city next year.
But it is a simple historical fact that the city has lacked, and still lacks, any single powerful visual feature to enhance its interest to the passing visitor, and to consolidate a confident and assertive identity for its citizens.
The excellent Black's Guide, 1906 edition, noted that it was an "ancient city of great historic interest, and pleasantly situated on the Suir" but remarked that "it can boast of only one bit of the picturesque - Reginald's Tower". That guidebook went on to make the icily deflating comment that the city "in itself offers little inducement to the tourist to linger".
Times have changed, and an evident deep commitment by the city authorities and citizenry to urban regeneration and preservation of the many individual historic features of its built environment have already rendered that judgment obsolete.
But a radical and visionary decision on the future of the quays could be the single crucial factor which would enhance and embellish Waterford's confident step into the new millennium.