More cloud seeding receives OK
Some commenters to Interstate Stream Commission concerned over floods in last year’s burn scar
TAOS — The New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission has approved another cloud seeding project by a Texas-based company that seeks to increase precipitation across the eastern third of the state, with commissioners adding the caveat the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire burn scar be excluded from the project area due to risk of flooding.
The new application from Seeding Operations & Atmospheric Research, like its 2021 application, was sponsored by the Roosevelt Soil and Water Conservation District. The document states the weather modification would be conducted between April 1 and Oct. 31 over the counties of Chaves, Colfax, Curry, DeBaca, Eddy, Guadalupe, Harding, Lea, Lincoln, Mora, Otero, Quay, Roosevelt, San Miguel and Union.
After 23 people submitted comments in opposition to the project, the Weather Control Committee of the Interstate Stream Commission recommended approval of the application but only after it was amended to exclude Mora and San Miguel counties.
“I am opposed to cloud seeding. This could cause additional flooding in the burn scar,” Mora resident Joseph Griego said in a comment submitted to the Interstate Stream Commission. “The danger of health risks involved in this process is unknown. Please stop playing
God with the weather.”
“All of those 23 protestants came from Taos, Mora or San Miguel counties,” Nicholas Rossi, an attorney for the Interstate Stream Commission, told commissioners at a February meeting. Citing concerns modified rainfall might occur outside the project boundaries, Commissioner Phoebe Suina cast the lone vote to deny the application.
Suina is a member of San Felipe and Cochiti pueblos, and has a background in post-wildfire disaster recovery, including experience with flood mitigation within the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire burn scar.
“Was that also looked at, in terms of making sure that it wasn’t an immediately southern county, that it wouldn’t then carry the
[precipitation] onto San Miguel or Mora [counties]?” she asked.
Interstate Stream Commission Deputy Director Hannah Riseley-White said, “We concluded that the county boundaries were sufficiently distanced from the burn scar areas, that as long as operations were outside of those county boundaries there was no chance of precipitation on the burn scar areas.”
According to the company’s application, “This weather modification activity will be a nonrandomized cloud seeding operational program for the primary purpose of increasing rainfall,” which the company said has been proven to increase precipitation in neighboring Texas.
“Evaluations have shown an increase of roughly 15 percent across the Texas target areas, with some areas seeing upwards of 2 inches of additional rainfall from operational cloud seeding,” the company said in the application.
“Aircraft will be used to deliver the seeding agent,” silver iodide or calcium chloride flares, and “suspension of cloud seeding in a county or part of a county will occur when a warning is issued by the National Weather Service.”
The company also included summaries of specific seeding operations last year, including a report regarding what it said was a successful June 28 flight.
“Storms were seeded in Roosevelt and Lea [counties] as favorable dynamical forcing was in place over the region,” the report states. “Cells were seeded near Dora before pushing further south near Lovington with both clusters responding well to our efforts.”
Before voting to approved the application, Commissioner Paula Garcia called for a “more robust regulatory framework for cloud seeding in general.”
Garcia, a Mora County resident who serves as executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association, sits on the Interstate Stream Commission’s Weather Control Committee with Commissioner Aron Balok.
“It’s probably a good time to revisit our rule and really see if it’s adequate, based on the concerns we’re receiving from the public,” Garcia said.
This story first appeared in The Taos News, a sister publication of The Santa Fe New Mexican.