WeatherMod Cloud Seeding Guidelines

• Project Type: General OWC
• Applicant: ASCE-Irrigation and Drainage Division
• Project Name: Weather Modification/Guidelines for Cloud Seeding
• Title: Guidelines for Cloud Seeding to Augment Precipitation
• Date: 2/1/1982
• Water Conservation - Doc Type: Final Report

Cloud seeding also impacts intangibles - those items
for which it is impossible to place precise monetary values.
Intangibles can include scenery, personal convenience, and
collective concerns of the environmental movement. Since
intangibles are not marketed items, value measurements are
not simple or practical. Impacts must be considered from
the national, as well as the local point of view.,

2.2.3 Summary of Summer and Winter Economic Studies.
In an Illinois State Water Survey review of 60 studies on
economic impacts of weather modification activities, it is
stated that:

"Because weather events can have severe adverse
effects on economic activity, the gross benefits
of successful weather modification activities are
apparently very high. And, in general, the opera-
tional costs of modification activities are small
relative to those gross benefits. But the indirect
costs of modification activities may be very great.
The most important of these indirect costs is that,
in general, those individuals suffering the adverse
effects are not the same individuals who are enjoying
the gross benefits. Therefore, even if the gross
benefits of an individual pr~ject are greater than
the sum of the direct and indirect costs, the existence
of such positive net benefits does not insure that
some individuals would not suffer substantial decreases
in welfare.

"Probably the most important aspect in determining
the credibility of any economic analysis, however,
is the viewpoint of that analysis. In conducting
such an analysis, it should be clear that the goal
of the analysis is to determine the effects of the
modification activity on the entire economy of a
region, not just impacts on those sectors which
derive benefits from the planned activity." (14)

Economic evaluations are difficult to conduct because
of the need to know the details of the precipitation modifica-

2-8