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Idaho Power briefs Senate committee on collaborative cloud seeding program, cites snowpack gains and safety studies
Summary
Idaho Power presented its collaborative cloud seeding program to a Senate committee, describing program history, current scale (63 ground generators and three aircraft), estimated basin-level gains of roughly 1 million acre-feet across the Snake River Basin, and cited studies finding no environmental harm from silver iodide use.
Cresta Davis, senior manager of water resources at Idaho Power, told the Senate committee the company’s collaborative cloud seeding program aims to augment winter snowpack to benefit irrigation, hydropower, aquifer recharge and fish and recreation.
Davis said Idaho Power’s program now uses 63 remote ground generators and three aircraft stretching from western Wyoming through the Payette Basin, and that the program’s estimated average annual benefits by basin are roughly: Boise Basin 240,000 acre-feet, Wood River Basin just over 100,000 acre-feet, Upper Snake Basin about 600,000 acre-feet and Payette Basin close to 200,000 acre-feet — totaling just over 1 million acre-feet across the Snake River Basin. Davis reported an approximate cost of about $4 per acre-foot when program costs are…
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