Members of the Wyoming Farm Bureau, furious over water lost to cloud-seeding operations in Utah, are trying to get the federal government to regulate atmospheric water rights.
"Now it's not only a question of who owns the water in the ground, but also who will control the moisture in the air before it reaches the ground," John Stevens, a member of the Uinta (Wyo.) County Commission, told the Farm Bureau's natural and environmental resource committee.Stevens and others in Uinta County say cloud-seeding projects in Utah are depriving them of badly needed winter precipitation.
The county commissioner told the committee earlier this week that there are 160 locations in a 150-mile area in Utah that are using cloud seeding to produce moisture along the Wasatch Front.
"There were between eight and 10 storms originating from the Pacific Ocean by November last year which dumped 70 inches of snow on the mountains of the Wasatch Front," said Stevens. "Uinta County didn't receive an inch of that moisture."
When the county commissioner asked Utah officials to postpone their cloud-seeding operations for 30 days so the downwind effect of the operations could be evaluated, they refused.
According to the Farm Bureau, Utah officials indicated the $600 million ski industry that benefits from the increased snowfall would not allow the cloud-seeding operations to stop.