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Water agencies will try to bring on rain

BY JAMES GELUSO, Californian staff writer
e-mail: jgeluso@bakersfield.com | Wednesday, May 30 2007 10:55 PM

Last Updated: Wednesday, May 30 2007 10:58 PM

Faced with a dry year, three area water providers and a possible fourth are planning to take unusual measures to wring the last bits of moisture from the sky.

They'll hire Fresno-based Atmospherics Inc. to fly cloud-seeding missions over the Kern River's north fork during the summer. They already pay the firm to seed clouds in the winter, but this is the first time they're trying the summertime approach.

"I'll call it a little bit of a gamble on our part," said Florn Core, Bakersfield's water resources manager. "It's a trial basis, it's a dry year, it's worth it to give it a try."

The targets of the seeding efforts are storms that come up from the Gulf of California into the upper part of the Kern River watershed. The clouds head north through a narrow trough that reaches from Kernville to Mount Whitney.

The idea of seeding the clouds is to make them dump their moisture over the Kern River basin, where it will come to Kern County, said Steve Lafond, Bakersfield's hydrographic supervisor.

Core said the company already made a flight earlier this month under its existing winter-season contract. A day and a half later, there was a noticeable bump in flows, Core said, although it's impossible to be sure the seeding was responsible.

Each of the providers involved can expect to pay $16,000 to $18,000 for the service over the four months, depending on factors ranging from the number of storms that come up the trough to the cost of fuel, Core said.

For decades, the providers have paid for cloud seeding during the winter to increase the amount of snowfall over the basin. But this is the first time they will try summer seeding.

Cloud seeding involves airplanes firing silver iodide into clouds to induce rain.

The Bakersfield Water Board approved the move Tuesday. The North Kern Water Storage District and Buena Vista Water Storage District boards have already approved it. The Kern Delta Water District hasn't approved it yet, Core said. If Kern Delta doesn't join the effort, the three remaining providers will likely just split the cost, he said.

The providers are desperate because the snowmelt this year is less than a third of normal, Lafond said. Isabella Lake currently holds about 243,000 acre-feet of water, or 79.3 billion gallons, and is expected to drop to half that this fall, he said.

Lafond said the area is on track for the 11th driest in the 105 years that records have been kept.