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Table 1 lists stakeholder groups identified in the Weisbecker study as affected by WQSA. Interviews with stakeholders showed that communities at high elevations, environmentalists, loggers, mining interests, and those involved in summer tourism were opposed to WQSA. Some farmers and ranchers and ski area operators were unsure. Those in favor included chambers of commerce, electric power people, water boards representing agriculture and conservancy districtr and the U.S. Forest Service. Concerns expressed at that time included the following: o more avalanche, o more unintended snow on residents in downwind areas, o increased snow removal costs, o snow preventing employees from getting to work, o heavier snow loads on roofs, o spring flooding, o adverse effects on logging operations, and o shortened summer tourist season. Weisbecker's recommendations concerning compensation of mountain area communi- ties were published at the end of the five-year CRBPP project, so they. were never implemented in the San Juan area by the federal government. Nor was com- pensation ever provided during subsequent private cloud seeding operations in the area. Lambright8 traced the development of cloud seeding in Colorado, particularly in its political context, and touched on the use of snowpack augmentation in the San Juan area during the winter 1976 emergency snow drought relief operations spon- sored by the State 'of Colorado. However, Lambright focused on state level de- cision making and did not attempt to assess local area response to the technology. Community response in Southwestern Colorado was studied in the early 1970s as part of the Comparative Study of Public Acceptance and Rejection of Weather Modification Technologies by the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado and later at a private research firm in Boulder.9,1O However, the results of the monitoring of public response in the San Juans were not published at that time. Colorado State University researchers revisited the area in 1987, interviewed 30 community leaders or persons known to have some interest in this issue--representing the range of stakeholder interests, and collected news clippings, reports and other documentation concerning community response. The case study reported here, then, is based on data collected during ,both the early 1970s and the 1987 studies. Back2round ' The Continental Divide winds through Southwestern Colorado, crowning a branch of the Rocky Mountains called the San Juans. Several 14,OOO-foot peaks tower over the region, bypassed by 10,000-foot passes along Highway 550--"The Million Dollar Highway"--between Durango at the southern and Ouray at the northern boundaries of the mountain range. The highway between these towns traverses some of the most stunning scenery in the United States, and in the wintertime is notoriously avalanche-prone. 2 E .