Robbing Peter to pay Paul: drought driving water thefts through geoengineering

In 2020 University of Wyoming researchers learned that seeding clouds with silver iodide did increase snowfall about ten percent in some experiments but has failed to reduce drought conditions. Nevertheless, North Dakota conducts geoengineering exercises in parts of that state every year ostensibly to reduce hail damage and enhance rainfall potential. 

Daniel Swain is a climate scientist at UCLA and with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He says the 3-5% bumps in water that weather modification squeezes from clouds isn't worth the gamble with water equity.

North Dakota state Rep. Matt Ruby says the bottom line is that we shouldn’t be messing with Mother Nature. What Ruby’s bill would do is require the county commissioners to vote to approve participating in the program each year and get approval from neighboring counties in order to get state funding. Ruby’s home county, Ward, dropped out of the program in 2020 and Burke County left in 2019. “We can watch the storms coming from the Montana border and you can even watch the flight data for those (cloud-seeding) airplanes. You can watch them go up and then you can watch the storm dissipate right as they get over my area,” Ruby said. [Bill could limit cloud seeding in North Dakota]

William R. Cotton is Professor Emeritus of Meteorology at Colorado State University. He says the practice can produce minimal results in winter and summertime seeding is probably fruitless but now there are eight state-permitted cloud seeding generators across Colorado.

While Texas uses cloud seeding to help irrigate fields for farmers, it’s more common in the West, where states like Idaho, California, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming use it to help fill up their rivers and reservoirs. Idaho Power spends about $4 million a year on its cloud-seeding program, which yields an 11% or 12% increase in snowpack in some areas, resulting in billions of gallons of additional water at a cost of about $3.50 per acre-foot. That compares with about $20 per acre-foot for other methods of accessing water, such as through a water supply bank. [How states across the West are using cloud seeding to make it rain]

In parts of the Southwest some authorities are so fearful of deficits in water supplies they've entertained Durango, Colorado-based Western Weather Consultants' pitch to acquire a “weather control and precipitation enhancement license" from the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission but after criticism for not consulting with pueblos the application was withdrawn. Now, over objections from the environmental community the commission has approved weather modification in Chavez, Curry, De Baca, Lea, Quay, and Roosevelt Counties. 

Dan Martin, a research engineer with the Agricultural Research Service, recently patented the new technology using electrified water. "The conventional technology yields about a 10 to 15% increase over the untreated clouds. And with our technique, it was yielding 25 to 30% increase in precipitable water," Martin said. Researchers say the 25% to 30% increase in moisture being reported with the new technique is not conclusive, given the initial test was done on only 13 clouds.[Initial results from new cloud-seeding method produce more rain, researchers say]

Watersheds in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico provide between 50-75% of the water found in the Rio Grande but irrigators in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas take at least 80% of that from the 1,885 mile long river. A compact limits Colorado to 100,000 acre feet and New Mexico to 200,000 acre feet each year. An acre foot is almost 326,000 gallons. 

A lawsuit that could settle a river allocation dispute between New Mexico and Texas is being heard by the Supreme Court of the United States but a deal has been announced and if approved could end the squabble.