WEST JORDAN, Utah — Utah's expansion of cloud seeding is starting to provide a return on investment, water policymakers were told Thursday.
"Statewide average is 10.4% increase in snowpack," said Jake Serago, an engineer with the Utah Division of Water Resources, during a presentation to the state's water resources board on Thursday.
Cloud seeding pumps silver iodide into the atmosphere during a storm to generate a little more precipitation. It does not create storms, nor does it intensify them. It just squeezes a little more juice out of an existing storm.
The Utah State Legislature pumped a massive amount of cash into cloud seeding earlier this year in an effort to help mitigate impacts from drought. The state's cloud seeding budget went from roughly $200,000 in 2022 to nearly $16 million this year.
With that money, Utah's Department of Natural Resources purchased 190 remotely-operated generators. As a result, the state now operates the world's largest remote-controlled cloud seeding program, Serago said.
"It improves the efficiency, it can be turned on and off quicker," Serago told FOX 13 News. "It improves the effectiveness because it can be placed at higher elevations above temperature inversions, for example."
The state has also begun purchasing drones to expand cloud seeding capabilities, making Utah the first in the USA to have an experimental drone program. It will help in areas where ground-based generators will not work, such as the La Sal mountains in southeastern Utah where climate patterns are different than other parts of the state, Serago told the board. Drones will also be utilized in the Fillmore, Moab and Kamas areas.
"I think it’s really exciting that we’re leading the world," said Dana Van Horn, who represents southeastern Utah on the water resources board.
She said the effort could help the Colorado River, which has seen dramatic declines in water availability.
"If we can increase the snowpack in the La Sal mountains, I think it will directly impact the Colorado River flow," Van Horn told FOX 13 News.
Lower Colorado River Basin states now give money to Utah for cloud seeding along the Colorado River, as it benefits them downstream. Idaho recently invested $1 million in Utah's cloud seeding efforts around the Bear River, which benefits that state and ours in the Great Salt Lake Basin.
While silver iodide is considered safe for humans and the environment, the water resources board was told the state is also partnering with the Utah Climate Center and other academic institutions to research cloud seeding and its effectiveness. But environmentalists are quick to point out that cloud seeding is not a single solution to Utah's water problems.
"Cloud seeding is a part of a silver buckshot method. There are no silver bullets as it relates to solving our Western water issues," said Kyle Roerink, the executive director of the Great Basin Water Network,
Roerink said his group was not opposed to it and he was happy to see some good data coming out of Utah's investment. But he said Utah should be pushing harder for people to conserve water.
"I think the best thing that we could be doing is just reducing our use all over the place, but that’s painful," he told FOX 13 News. "This is a somewhat expensive way to mitigate that pain."
