Board Meeting 05/05/1983

• Board Meeting Date: 5/5/1983
• Description: Minutes, Agenda, Memoradums May 5, 1983
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

STME OF COLORADO
COLORADO WATER CONSERVATION BOARD
Department of Natural Resources
823 State Centennial Building
1313 Sherman Street
Denver,Colorado 80203
Phone:[phone] '� t
M E M O R A N D U M Richard D.Lamm
°— — — — — — Governor
J.William McDonald
Director
TO: Members, CWCB David W.Walker
Deputy Director
FROM: Bill McDonald
DATE: June 1 , 1982
SUBJECT: Colorado River Enhanced Snowpack Test (CREST)
Background
The Bureau of Reclamation embarked upon a major winter
orographic cloud seeding program in the Upper Colorado River
Basin in 1970 with the initiation of Project Skywater . The
project ran for a period of five years and then it took another
couple of years to publish the results. For a variety of
reasons, a good deal of controversy arose over the proper
interpretation of the Project Skywater results. This, coupled
with other considerations, prompted a Congressionally directed
inquiry into the state of the art of weather modification in the
late 1970s.
As a consequence of this inquiry and other factors, the
Bureau' s weather modification program in the Upper Colorado River
Basin has been, for the past several years, a relatively low-key
and small-budget program. Indeed , in the past four or five
years the President's recommended budget did not include funding
for winter orographic cloud seeding activities in the Upper
Colorado River Basin. Appropriations amounting to only several
hundred thousand dollars annually were made by Congress only
after several of the Colorado River Basin states requested the
same each year.
CREST Program
It is against this background that the Bureau of Reclamation
has recommended an acceleration of its weather modification
research program in the Colorado River Basin . In particular , the
Bureau of Reclamation, in late 1981 , indicated that a major
d175
crest
Robert A.Jackson,Chairman•John R.Fetcher,Vice Chairman
CM.Furneaux,Dale F.Grant,Richard W.Johnston,Jr.Frederick V.Krrx'ger.David W.Robbins.Herbert H.Vandemoer