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<br />sno"~ack enhancenent L~ a specific area of the Sierra Xevada, the <br />..\m.erican River Basin. Hm.;ever, more recent data and analyses, as re- <br />flected in the 2-vollL'"1e report prepared by ~rth .-\merican Keather <br />Consultants (~..\KC) for this E.eeting, are leading to major changes In <br />the concept of the SCPP. Consequently, the description of the proposal <br />section of the EIS must be updated to reflect the ~~KC design and evalua- <br />tion effort and decisions that ~ill occur after this meeting. <br /> <br />The next section of the EIS is the description of the environment. As <br />\fe nm.: knO\\, present thinking is that the SCPP may be eJl..--panded east of <br />the Sierra crest in a cooperative effort with the state of Xevada. This <br />"ill not only radically change the description of the prllnary study area, <br />but also "ill enlarge potential areas of do"n"ind effects. <br /> <br />Once "k'e have described the project and the environment in \fhich the pro- <br />ject \dll occur, \ie enter the environmental ii11pacts section of the ErS. <br />This section of the EIS for a research project leads to a major departure <br />from the mai..~stream of traditional statements, and the distinction be- <br />tween research efforts and construction or development projects is clear. <br />Again, this is because in a~ospheric research "e are seeking answers. <br />l\"e are trying to learn hmi storms \dll respond to certain cloud seeding <br />procedures. On the ether hand, people can visualize \..-hat a dam of a <br />certain height at a certain location on a particular stream ~ill look <br />like. And, if you tell them hmi J!lUch \\ater the basin above the dam <br />yields, they Kill lmm.... about hm~ many acre-feet of \..;ater and hm~ many <br />surface acres there \dll be in the reservoir. You can l.valk around the <br />project site and determine \ihat resources and values are involved in <br />the trade-off process. The operations plan "ill tell you what the dOwn- <br />stream benefits \dll be. Specific judgment of this type are problematic <br />in a research project that \dll add an incremental amollllt to the varying <br />annual precipitation of the area. Therefore, \...-e \dll provide state-of- <br />the-art evaluations of possible effects on the environ~ent as the result <br />of the SCPP. <br /> <br />-10- <br />