WMOD00398

• Project Name: Project Skywater
• Title: Precipitation Management and the Environment - An Overview of the Skywater IX Conference
• Date: 9/1/1977
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

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institutions, must be supplied with appropriate economic and environmental assessments of
probable outcomes, and must monitor all systems.
The role of governmental institutions is to respond to expressed interests and concerns and to
balance needs against constraints. At the community level, expression is shaped by referenda,
committees, hearings, notices, etc.
Economic institutions are concerned with estimated direct benefits and costs, lower order and
indirect economic effects, and means of funding the dt~cisionmaking activities.
Legal institutions need to identify and prove that the water was developed by precipitation
management and establish ownership of it; provide a mechanism for compensation of the
disbenefited, perhaps by using experts to establish causation; and address problems of interstate
compact and international treaty limitations.
Conclusions and recommendations.-Precipitation management should be treated
socioeconomically as a new resource having its own characteristics, not as a modification of an
old resource, deemphasizing environmental impact analysis and leaping to "what could be."
Attention needs to be paid to the institutional problems of innovation and to the constraints that
must be overcome.
It is recommended that a technology assessment should be undertaken to approach
precipitation management from the viewpoint of the problems to which it might be applied.
Models of water markets and market relationships should be developed and geared to price and
ownership. A mechanism should be provided to compensate those who suffer loss.

Seeding Agents (Dr. Donald A. Klein, Convener)

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Nested within the week-long workshop was a 2-day meeting of a study group that is preparing
a report to the National Science Foundation on the status of research on seeding agents, allowing
interaction with a substantially larger group of experts.
The goal was to consider who raises issues relative to seeding agents, what issues they raise, and
how-the group, as scientists, responds to these issues. These elements were assembled in matrix
form, of which figure 7 is an abridgment. The number values in the line "magnitude of effects"
on figure 7 was added to the original matrix by interpretation of the discussion of individual
issues and may depart in minor respects from the intention of the group. The environmental
issues have been placed in order of decreasing level of concern among issue raisers, and the
issue-raising groups are listed in order of the number of issues that each raised in the complete
matrix.
Responses to issues.-Direct toxicity of silver has highest priority among lay groups not
familiar with current research findings. There appears to be no real threat from silver iodide as a
cloud seeding agent.
The "general damage" category on figure 7 relates to possible toxic effects in the legal sense.
Because the agents are used in such small quantities, real effects are probably insignificant. Public
concern is probably based on misunderstanding, not on actual damages.
The issue of impacts on the soil-sediment-aquatic continuum and related processes of sewage
treatment has as its major point of concern the possible effects of transient seeding-agent levels
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on primary production of algae. Direct effects on fish are considered of minor scientific concern.
An additional concern is effects on anaerobic methane production and denitrification, but

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