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<br />I <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />MR. SCHLEUSENER: <br /> <br />loZ~ <br /> <br />"Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll attempt <br />to talk into the mike and talk to you gen- <br />tlemen here and members of the Board. First <br />of all, I would like to say we do appreciate <br />the opportunity to take some of your time <br />to present additional information to you in <br />regard to this study of the effect on preci- <br />pitation amounts of the cloud seeding pro- <br />gram that is being conducted in the high <br />plains region of eastern Colorado this sum- <br />mer. <br /> <br />I think before we get into the details <br />it might be well to give you a little bit <br />of the backgIound on this particular proj- <br />ect. I think one problem the residents of <br />eastern Colorado have in common is the <br />general problem of weather. It ranges from <br />snow storms in the winter time, to dust <br />storms in the spring, to the problem of <br />hail storms in the summer time and rightly <br />so, because th~ area of northeastern Colo- <br />rado and southwestern Nebraska and south- <br />eastern Wyoming has an average of around <br />eight hatl days per year which makes it the <br />highest hail hazard.in the United States and <br />probably in the world. Because they have <br />this common problem of hail, the residents <br />of this area have banded together to fight <br />this common problem of hail and together <br />the residents of this area have raised this <br />summer a total of $65,000. They have con- <br />tracted with the Weather Modification Com- <br />pany of San Jose, California, to carry out <br />a program of cloud seeding which began on <br />the 15th of May and is scheduled to run <br />through the 15th of September. They are <br />now in operation. They have a total of <br />about 125 ground generators in an area <br />covering about 3,000 square miles and in <br />addition have five aircraft on which silver- <br />iodide generators are mounted that they are <br />using to seed the clouds in that area. <br /> <br />Now they have produced some effects on <br />these clouds and I will describe them to <br />you a little later, in a little bit more de- <br />tail. Because of thesefffects, which some- <br />times are rather spectacular, they are now <br />beginning to catch quite a bit of protest <br />from residents in the area along this line. <br />The thinking is this, that because some of <br />