hat we need more research and more information and better witesses, it is the kind of story you have told here today. Thank you ery much.

Mr. FISHER. Thank you.

Senator McGOVERN. I will ask that a prepared statement by Mr. Brewer, a partner of Mr. Fisher, be printed at this point in the hearng where it will be following Mr. Fisher's statement.

(The statement follows:)

STATEMENT BY WILBUR BREWER, BOWMAN COUNTY, N. DAK.

I am a grain farmer in Bowman County, North Dakota. I was born in Bownan 41 years ago and have lived here my entire life with the exception of two ears in Air Force Pilot Training in World War Two and two years in Business Administration School at Long Beach City College, Long Beach, California. I m married and have three children. I have been actively engaged in grain arming since 1946 and before this was dependent upon my parents who were armers in the Bowman area since 1910 or shortly after the Milwaukee Railroad eached the area. I operate a farm of slightly more than 3000 acres with 1000 cres of wheat allotment and 200 to 300 acres of oats. We also run a small herd of sheep on the untillable land. I operated an Aerial Spraying Service for seven ears by myself and six more years with Bill Fisher as my partner before [uitting the Aerial Spraying Business last fall (1965).

Bowman County is one of the highest hail loss areas in the United States as ar as we can determine and in a series of years, 1954 to 1960, inclusive, I was ailed either severely or totally in six out of the seven years. The Fisher farm ies in the same general area as my farm does and their losses would be comarable to mine. Bill and I discussed this situation and decided that we should ook into the possibility of doing something about it.

We corresponded with as many people as we could to find out the costs involved and the possibility of reducing hail losses. We were able to contact, several people with some knowledge of this business and one commercial firm indicated they would be interested in suppressing our hail if we had a million acre carget and $200,000.00 to spend on it. This, of course, was far beyond the means of our community so no further contact was made with these people. We also came in contact with a Mr. Ora Lohse of Valier, Montana, who had an active project and went to Valier to discuss his project. The outcome of this meeting was the basis for our operation and we leased one airplane and four Silver Iodide Generators from him. The second airplane was purchased from a private party n Great Falls, Montana. We went to our neighbors and asked them if they would help support this program as we really don't know if it would be successful but thought it should be worth a try. They started an association known as the Bowman Slope Hail Suppression Association and collected money on a voluntary basis at the rate of 15 cents per seeded acre on small grains. Our original area was 18 miles wide and 30 miles long. We used two AT-6 type aircraft and held our area small because we didn't know how effective we would De as neither of us had any formal training in Meteorology and were not familiar with this type flying. The first two years we seeded clouds on a daylight only Dasis but then had heavy losses at night. We decided that we would also have Co seed nights to be effective. We have done so the last three seasons.

We have had requests at different times to expand our area and have expanded to what we feel is as large as we can handle with the equipment we

nave. acres.

Our present area is 30 miles wide by 70 miles long or over 1,300,000 We have plans to lease a portable radar this season and we feel this will be a great help. We are also buying two light aircraft in the Piper Comanche Or Beechcraft Bonanza class to seed with this year. We are going to lighter airplanes because of the cost of maintenance and fuel on the AT-6 type is getting prohibitive for our budget and parts are almost impossible to get as they are World War Two Trainers.

The money collected and turned over to us has varied from $6000.00 to 14,000.00 per year which has covered the bare necessities of the project. We have kept our planes ready to go on a moment's notice for three months (June 1 to September 1) each of the last five years. We also have 20 ground generators placed throughout the area.

We don't know how effective we have been statistically but we do know it has helped in many specific cases and we feel that if we can keep the hail losses down and possibly get a slight increase in rainfall in this semi-arid area we can repay the cost of the project many times over. We are sure we have done this.

We are using the Lohse type generators and have leased four of them from Mr. Lohse each year for the past five years. We have also had much helpful advice from Dr. Richard Schleusener of the South Dakota School of Mines which has been very beneficial to us over the last four years and has helped to make our project more successful.

I sincerely believe any money spent in Weather Modification or Weather Modification Research will return dividends inconceivable in any other business.

Senator McGOVERN. The next witness is Dr. John Bellamy, director of the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Wyoming at Laramie. We are happy to have you with us this morning, Dr. Bellamy.

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN BELLAMY, DIRECTOR, NATURAL

RESOURCES INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING

Dr. BELLAMY. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it is indeed a pleasure to have this opportunity to discuss with you the subject of weather modification and climate control. For your information, I am the director of the Natural Resources Research Institute of the University of Wyoming, a registered professional engineer and land surveyor (Wyoming License No. 280) and a certified consulting meteorologist (American Meteorological Society No. 23). My professional interests are primarily those of civil engineering, in which I obtained a bachelor of science degree from the University of Wyoming in 1936. I have specialized in the development of operational procedures which better uilize our knowledge of meteorology, in which I obtained a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Chicago in 1947.

Our active participation in the general field of weather and climate modification at the University of Wyoming began and has been closely associated with the Bureau of Reclamation's program in this field since its inception in 1962. Our approach from the outset has been that of engineering development. That is, the primary goal of our particular research program has been more to learn how to utilize existing knowledge concerning precipitation phenomena than to try to extend such scientific knowledge ourselves. We feel fortunate to have discovered one particular kind of cloud which is especially amenable to the controlled production of significant amounts of additional snow on the ground with well known techniques of seeding with silver iodide. This is the cap cloud which frequently enshrouds Wyoming's higher mountain peaks in the wintertime, about which I understand you have already been briefed.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS

As I understand it, the subject of this hearing is that encompassed by Senate bill S. 2875 including its relationship to Senate bills S. 23 and S. 2916. I thus assume that we are interested today in considering the entire field of weather modification with special emphasis on what legislation the Congress should enact to help provide for fuller

utilization of our atmospheric water resources. As I see it, this involves considerations of what levels of funding, operational responsibilities, and regulatory authority various Federal agencies should have in this field with respect to each other and with respect to State and private agencies.

Finding answers to these difficult questions seems to me to depend, first of all, on a clear recognition of the extremely broad implications of the term "weather modification and climate control." This term, without additional qualification, encompasses the control of three of the four elements-earth, water, air, and fire-which the Greeks recognized long ago as being essential to all life. That is, it encompasses the control of the state of the atmosphere, of our water supplies which nearly all fall originally from the atmosphere, and of the radiations from the fires of the sun which in turn control the circulation and precipitation processes of the atmosphere.

In view of the vital importance of the air, water, and fire to all aspects of human life and endeavor, the problem at hand resolves itself largely into recognizing the relationships, first, between the control of atmospheric water resources and other kinds of weather modification and climate control and, second, between the many different kinds and characteristics of atmospheric water resources in different parts of the country. A clear recognition of such relationships should provide the guidelines required to reach conclusions concerning the most desirable kinds of legislative action.

SCALES OF WEATHER MODIFICATION ACTIVITIES

It is noteworthy in this regard that the general field of weather modification and climate control is hardly new. It has long been practiced in a very real sense by building houses and setting thermostats to control the weather and climate of the atmosphere in which most of us spend most of our lives. The extension of such weather and climate control to the use of protective covers for plants-in the form of cloth or plastic sheets, greenhouses, or protective layers of smoke over orchards-differ more in scale than in kind or intent. A slightly larger scale of control is now starting to be exercised by artificially dispersing fog over airport runways; the seeding of cap clouds is representative of a somewhat larger scale but very similar kind of control.

The point here is that considerations of the different scales of weather modification and control provide a useful perspective concerning the kinds of problems which confront us today. Evidently the road of progress in this field (and of civilization itself) is marked by the scale of control of weather and climate that mankind has learned to exercise. From this point of view, we are currently at that stage that control is starting to be exercised on the scale of airport runways; we are rapidly learning how to control some precipitation processes on the scale of cap clouds or individual storm cells; and long-term research is now underway which will undoubtedly lead to knowledgeable control of larger storm systems and even-at some time in the remote future-large-scale circulations of the atmosphere.

REGULATION OF WEATHER MODIFICATION ACTIVITIES

Such considerations of the scale and present status of weather modification activities provide some very useful guidelines concerning their regulation. They clearly point out a continuing growth of a need for some regulations since the lives of more and more people are affected more and more significantly as the scale of such operations grows. Conversely, however, they also clearly indicate that the largescale effects are not likely to become operational (or even tried experimentally) for some time yet, and hence that no urgent need now exists to impose restrictive regulations on them at this time.

As a general principle, it seems to me to be most desirable to vest whatever regulation might be needed in those governmental agencies which correspond in size to the scale of the effects of the kind of modification involved. For example, the regulation of extremely small-scale modification is now well accomplished by cities with building codes and zoning. Similarly, whatever governmental regulation of airport fog-clearing operations might be found to be necessary could well be vested in the cities or counties involved. At the next larger scale of modification, the effects of seeding cap clouds are limited to fairly small regions at fixed geographical positions, and hence could best be regulated by those relatively few States in which cap clouds occur and can be advantageously seeded. In accordance with this principle, whatever Federal regulation of weather modification activities might be found to be necessary in the future could well be limited to those kinds of activities which are definitely known to affect areas as large as several States.

In this regard, the regulation of cap-cloud seeding operations by the States involved seems especially appropriate. The intent of such capcloud seeding operations will be to increase the high-mountain snowpack in-and only in-those Western States in which the resultant increase of surface water supplies will be useful for, especially, power generation and irrigation. Consequently, the mechanisms for regu lating such operations are already at hand in much the same way that those States now regulate the diversion and use of their surface waters; the seeding of cap clouds can well be considered to be little more than a diversion of an atmospheric stream of water at a particular fixed geographical position. Whatever interstate problems might be encountered in such operations are likely to involve changes of the flow of surface streams more than of atmospheric streams of water, and hence can well be solved within the framework of existing interstate compacts and commissions.

The regulation of the seeding of other than cap clouds potentially presents more problems, largely because the areal extent of the effects of such seeding are usually somewhat larger and are as yet less well known. Impending operations of this kind, however, are not likely to be effective in regions much larger than a single State for a long time yet. Consequently, the regulatory control of such operations could probably best be vested in the States in which they are to be conducted or, if and when necessary, to compacts between those few States in which a particular kind of operation is likely to be effective.

LICENSING

Much of my opinion concerning such regulatory policies stems from the closely related problem of licensing those who are to obtain permits for specific weather modification operations. Regardless of the degree of regulation, such operations can be no more effective than provided for by the technological capabilities and motivations of those who design and establish them.

Again the guidelines for the solution to this licensing problem is provided largely by considerations of the scale of phenomena involved, and by the example of impending cap-cloud seeding operations. The directly applicable precedent in this case is that only licensed professional engineers can submit applications for permits to divert surface waters in those Western States in which cap-cloud "diversions" of atmospheric streams of water are likely to be effective. I can see no advantage, and several serious potential disadvantages, of Federal rather than State licensing of comparable "atmospheric water-resource engineers," at least until such time as much larger scale diversions of atmospheric waters than are now impending become practicable.

As most of you are probably aware, this basic kind of regulation and licensing procedure has already been established for the utilization of atmospheric water resources within the State of Wyoming. It is appropriate that such action be pioneered by Wyoming since it was in Wyoming that Elwood Mead first established such procedures for regulating the utilization of western water supplies, and since Wyoming was the first State to institute the licensing of professional engineers in order to implement those procedures.

It is also noteworthy that the essential reason for requiring application for permits by a registered professional engineer is to insure the same kind of protection of the public interest and welfare that underlies most stated desires for the regulation of weather modification activities. This is clearly reflected in the following quotations from the creed of the pledge of the National Society of Professional Engineers, for which the primary prerequisite for membership is registration as a licensed professional engineer in one of the States.

As a Professional Engineer, I dedicate my professional knowledge and skill to the advancement and betterment of human welfare.

I pledge ✶ ✶✶ to place service before profit, the honor and standing of the profession before personal advantage, and the public welfare above all other considerations.

LEVELS OF SUPPORT

With regard to the levels with which various kinds of weather and climate control should be supported and/or conducted by various Federal agencies, it is only necessary here to indicate virtually complete agreement with the general philosophy and most of the details— with the exception of regulation and licensing details expressed in Senate bills S. 23 and S. 2875 and Senator Anderson's statement of the purpose of hearings on S. 2875. The vital importance of this general field to all kinds of human activity clearly demonstrates to me the need for increased activities by each of several mission-oriented agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation, NSF, ESSA, DOD, and