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<br />I. <br />INTRODUCTION <br /> <br />The steady decline in the surface elevation of the water <br />in Pyramid- Lake, near Reno, Nevada, became the subject of close <br />scrutiny in late 1969 and 1970. The Secretary of the Department <br />of the Interior, the Governor of California, and the Governor of <br />Nevada met to discuss the problem. A Pyramid Lake Task Force <br />was appointed and conducted a study of the water supplies of the <br />Truckee-Tahoe-Carson-Pyramid region with the primary aim of <br />finding solutions to the water problems facing the area, and <br />specifically as they affected Pyramid Lake. <br />The Task Force report contained a number of recommendations <br />designed to alleviate the water problems of the area. One of <br />these recommendations led to the implementation of a five-year <br />pilot cloud seeding project to investigate the feasibility of <br />augmenting the wintertime snowpack in the eastern Sierra Nevada <br />in the catchment areas supplying water to the, Truckee and Carson <br />. Rivers. <br />The Pyramid Lake Pilot Cloud Seeding Project began offi- <br />cially May 15, 1970 with the signing of a five-year contract* <br />between the Desert Research Institute of the University of <br />Nev.da System and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of <br />Reclamation, Division of Atmospheric Water Resources Management. <br />The stated objective of this contract was to "establish and con- <br />duct a cloud seeding research program in the headwaters of the <br /> <br />* Contract No. 14-06-0-7000; in the later years of the project, <br />supplementary funding was provided by the Department of Conserva- <br />tion and Natural Resources of Nevada. The collaborative work of <br />the Berkeley Statistical Laboratory in providing consultation <br />with regard to statistical design and in carrying out the pre~ <br />liminary analysis described in Chapters 12, 13 and 14 was sup- <br />ported in part by the Office of Naval Research. <br /> <br />1 -1 <br />