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<br />00[1126 <br /> <br />'On the basis of the information now available, it <br />does not appear that, if overlapping of precipitation- <br />management and hail-suppression projects were to double <br />the rate of accumulation of silver, such a situation <br />would materially alter the conclusions reached regarding <br />Project Skywater environmental impacts. If on the other <br />hand, a hail-suppression program that overlapped a <br />precipitation-management program were to result in <br />accumulations of silver at many times the rate resulting <br />from precipitation management alone, then consideration <br />of environmental impacts would be dominated by the hail <br />suppression program. The effect of precipitation <br />management in aggregation with hail suppression would <br />then be to shorten somewhat the period during which <br />accumulation could continue without incurring adverse <br />impacts, providing that such impacts would ensue at all. <br />[4, p. B-90] <br /> <br />'The 1976 Skywater IX Conference, Precipitation Manage- <br />ment and the Environment, included a 2-day meeting of a <br />study group that was preparing a report to the National <br />Science Foundation on the status of research on seeding <br />agents. The Skywater IX Conference report [16] includes <br />the report of the seeding agents' group following its <br />interaction with other Conference workshops. This <br />report states: "Based on purely environmental consid- <br />erations (not considering relative economics and changes <br />in delivery system capabilities), use of silver iodide <br />as a nucleating agent should have an insignificant <br />impact on the environment. This is based on the follow- <br />ing factors: - No biological evidence is available to <br />date to indicate that unacceptable changes might occur <br />in biological systems which are of concern to the <br />general public. - The relatively minor contribution of <br />silver released to the enviroment by weather modifica- <br />tion in comparison with other sources of silver.' <br /> <br />"The seeding agents study group later published a report <br />under the National Science Foundation grant entitled <br />'Environmental Impacts of Artificial Ice Nucleating Agents' <br />[51]. The report was recently summarized in a review by <br />Warburton [52], who states: <br /> <br />'The book's title implies we are dealing with the <br />effects of ice-nucleating agents upon the environment, <br />whereas, as the authors ably point out, there are few <br />observable effects from such chemical compounds (par- <br />ticularly silver iOdide); most of the effects are <br />produced by ionic silver or the bisulphides at concen- <br />trations generally not achieved by ice-nucleating agents <br />released into the atmosphere by man. It is regularly <br /> <br />29 <br />