WMOD00319

• Title: North American Interstate Weather Modification Council - Fiscal Year 2009 Request
• Prepared By: McClintock Associates, Inc.
• Date: 1/1/2007
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: General Information

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01(04/08 12:50 FAX [phone]

COLORADO RIVER BOARD

@002

STATE OF CAliFORNIA - THE; R~auRCES AGeNCY
COLORADO RIVER BOARD OF CALIFORNIA
770 FAlRMONT AVENUE, SUITE 100
GLENDALE. CA 91203.1068
[phone]
[phone] FAX

AANOLO SCI-lWARZENEGGER. GovSIlltlf

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December 12, 2007

The Honorable Barbara Boxer
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
U.S. Senate
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510 .

Dear Senator Boxer:

As one of your constituents, I would like to take this opportunity to bring to your attention recent
activities in the field of weather mo~ification. I am writing to express the support of the
Colorado River Board of California (Board) for S. 1807, The Weather Mitigation. Research and
D(jvelopment Policy Authorization Act of 2007 and respectfully request that you cosponsor S.
1807. In the United States over $15 million is spent each year on weather modification
operations that include snowpack augmentation, rainfall augmentation, and hail suppression.
This bill would develop and implement a coordinated national weather mitigation policy and a
cO'operative Federal and State program of weather mitigation research and development.

As recommended by a 2003 National Research Council report entitled Critical!ssues in Weather
Modification Research, a federally-sponsored weather modification research prograllJ is needed
and is supported by states that need a scientific means of evaluating current programs, as well as
increasing their effectiveness through applied research. Droughts in the United States result in an.
average economic loss of $6 to 8 billion per year, while severe hail producing storms result in up
to $2.3 billion in damage to crops and over $2 billion in property loss annually. Rain
enhancement and hail suppression weather modification projects help mitigate these losses.
Additional research in these areas is needed to make existing programs more effective and penuit
them to better quantify that effectiveness.

Recent droughts have produced low lake levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead and have led the
seven Colorado River Basin states to create cooperative agreements. A cooperative agreement
among the seven Colorado River Basin states is in place for wintertime cloud seeding in the
states of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to pursue water augmentation to the benefit of the entire
Colorado River System. Evaluations of the potential for snowpack augmentation by cloud
seeding in the Colorado River Basin indicate that a significant yield in .runoff can be attained
through properly designed projects. A 2006 U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) evaluation
indicates the potential for generating up to 800,000 additional acre-feet of water in an average
year if the stares were to implement hew programs and designate new areas for cloud seeding.

Weather modification operations and regulation currently reside within state and local
governments and it is the Board's belieffuat the federal role should be that of assistance with
applied research and practical technology transfer programs. The recent USBR Weather Damage