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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management of development. Development, however, is clearly too big and complex for
Skywater to tackle on its own. In connection with the general subject of development, it may be
germane to note the proposition that the United States has moved from an agricultural to an
industrial economy lmd then from an industrial to an information economy. According to
Robinson [ 11 ], information and services sectors of the economy account for more than
three-quarters of all employment. These are not water-intensive occupations, and it seems
unrealistic to suppose that precipitation management would affect them one way or another.
The issue of the ownership of water developed by precipitation management is another that
depends on open assumptions. In the Weatern States, water rights tend to be extremely specific
as to location of source and point of use, and very fine grained in a geographic sense. Despite
propositions to the contrary, it does not seem realistic to us to suppose that evaluation of the
results of precipitation management will become suffkiently deterministic within the foreseeable
future to be made the subject of ownership claims on such a geographically fine-grained basis or
with the degree of rigor generally required by a water court. We believe it more likely, therefore,
that a solution will be found to the problem outside the presently existing framework of
ownership rights. For example, the sovereignty of a state might be brought into play, on behalf
of the general welfare, to lay claim in the name of the state to a certain percentage of all surface
waters corresponding to an area-wide, long-term evaluation of increase achieved by precipitation
management, and to tax that water wherever and whenever appropriated for private use. By
apportioning the public financial support given to precipitation management by taxation among
the users of different water sources-direct rainfall, surface waters, and underground waters. It
seems certain that the state-of-the-art will support quantities evaluation on such an area-wide
basis before, perhaps long before, it will be attainable on a fine-grained geographic basis.
The issue behind the issue of compensation for disbeneficiaries is that of cause-and-effect as
related to particular instances of loss or injury. S~~veral lawyers have argued that a special
mechanism for compensation is necessary because the plaintiff is at a special disadvantage when
he attempts to prove a cause-and-effect relationship. They point to the lack of judgment for the
plaintiff in any case so far brought to court as proof of this position. However, a very different
interpretation is possible. In every such case we are aware of, the defendent has made a strong
case that precipitation management did not and could not reasonably have caused the particular
damage or injury complained of. For instance, in the case of Samples vs. Irving P. Krick,
Inc. [ 12] , the defendent convinced the jury that the seeded weather systems were so far removed
in space and time from those causing the floodIng that it was unreasonable to infer a
cause-and-effect relationship. Thus, it is quite possible to argue that the common law has
operated effectively in the few instances where it has been resorted to, and that we may expect
this state of affairs to continue; or at least that WI~ should not act to supervene against the
common law until it has been proven deficient. This is not to say we shall dismiss the matter
from our minds. It is to say that we shall not lightly abandon the principle of causality in the
name of a misplaced sympathy that could conceivably open a floodgate for baseless claims.

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