by nomo » Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:24 pm
The West's water future may float on cloud plan<br><br>Seeding program's cost, effectiveness still being debated<br><br>By Jerd Smith, Rocky Mountain News<br>April 17, 2006<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Colorado is at the center of an ambitious, multistate cloud-seeding plan that could boost mountain snowpack and potentially make available billions of gallons of new water.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>The cost of the plan isn't clear, and the whole idea isn't without critics. But the proposal has broad support among water managers of seven drought-plagued Western states that rely on the Colorado River.<br><br>"It's possible that we're going to be able to augment and that it won't be enormously expensive," said Russell George, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.<br><br>Any new water would belong to the whole Colorado River system, meaning that in years when there are super-sized spring snowmelts, all seven states would be able to capture some of the excess.<br><br>States that rely on the river estimate that more than 1.1 million acre-feet of new water, on average, could be generated for the entire region each year, according to the cloud-seeding analysis.<br><br>That's about 10 percent of the 15 million acre-feet the river carries in an average year, and about four times the amount of water that the Denver metro area consumes annually.<br><br>Because Colorado sits at the top of the river's massive watershed and because melting high-country snow produces about 70 percent of the river's water supply, Western water utilities plan to focus their cloud- seeding efforts both here and on the mountain ranges in Utah.<br><br>Jim Lochhead, a Colorado water attorney who has helped negotiate several agreements on the river, said cloud seeding would become one of an array of options the states use to cope with intermittent droughts and the thirst of growing populations.<br><br>"Nobody's saying this would be a silver bullet," Lochhead said.<br><br>As envisioned now, states such as Nevada, Arizona and California would pay water utilities in states such as Colorado and Utah to create cloud-seeding operations or expand existing ones.<br><br>Cloud seeding is attractive to water utility officials because they believe it costs very little to produce - about $10 to $20 an acre-foot. That's a fraction of what it costs to build a new reservoir.<br><br><br>Effectiveness questioned<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Serious questions remain, however, about whether cloud seeding - the practice of shooting silver iodide particles into winter clouds - really produces more water on the ground.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>"At the local level, there are a lot of pressures to increase precipitation. But there hasn't been enough money for in-depth, statistically validated research," said Dr. Robert Sarafin, a climate researcher at Boulder's National Center for Atmospheric Research. "That's the bottom line. How much more snow actually falls on the ground?"<br><br>Sarafin was among a group of scientists who wrote a sharply critical 2003 report on cloud seeding for the National Academy of Sciences.<br><br>Sarafin said the states need to proceed cautiously, but he lauded them for including a strong research component to the plan.<br><br>"It seems to me that you ought to know whether it really helps," Sarafin said. "What if the cloud seeding isn't increasing snowpack, but is reducing it? There aren't any short- cuts (to answering that question.)"<br><br>He's not the only critic of the plan.<br><br>"I think it's a giant waste of money," said Michael Cohen, a senior research associate who tracks Colorado River issues for the San Francisco-based Pacific Institute. "I don't see a huge (environmental) downside to it, but the science still doesn't show whether it actually works. If they can create another 1.1 million acre-feet of water, that's a huge amount. I wish them luck."<br><br>Cohen and others say money would be better spent paying farmers in California and Arizona not to farm in dry years, when cities need the water, or in financing more water-conservation programs, such as paying people to remove bluegrass lawns, as Las Vegas does.<br><br>Water managers admit that definitive research proving the effectiveness of cloud seeding is years away. But they point to several anecdotal studies, including one by Denver Water, that indicate an increase of about 10 percent in snowpack in areas where clouds had been seeded.<br><br><br>Era of cooperation possible<br><br>Key recommendations in the states' proposal include:<br><br>• Starting a three-year feasibility study to determine timing, costs and water-development potential of a multistate cloud-seeding effort.<br><br>• Launching a coordinated national research effort into cloud seeding led either by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation or the National Oceanographic and Atmospherics Administration.<br><br>• Expanding existing cloud-seeding programs.<br><br>Any programs in Colorado would be subject to existing guidelines, including stopping cloud seeding if snowpacks rise to the point that flooding becomes a concern.<br><br>The proposal may signal a new era of cooperation among the Western states, which have spent much of the past 100 years fighting one another over the river's increasingly stretched supplies.<br><br>This month, for example, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas anted up $45,000 to keep a cloud-seeding effort going in southwestern Colorado - an act of generosity rarely seen in the war zones along the river's banks.<br><br>The lingering drought dropped lakes Powell and Mead to alarming new lows, and many believe the river has entered an era of shortage that will make it difficult to keep those two giant water banks full.<br><br>That realization has water managers in all seven states working harder to find new water sources.<br><br>"There's a good spirit of cooperation around this," said Roger Patterson, deputy general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves Los Angeles and San Diego. "Droughts sometimes cause people to think differently."<br><br>The states also have been under fire from the federal government for failing to develop a drought plan for the river.<br><br>On Feb. 1, after 10 months of often bitter negotiations, they agreed to a joint-management plan for lakes Powell and Mead, and also said they would pursue new ways to boost water supplies in the region.<br><br>"I don't see how Colorado would be harmed if it's successful," George said. "I think the science has matured and that we probably should have an ongoing effort in place." <p></p><i></i>
