In need of water to fight an ongoing drought and persistent wildfires, state officials are turning to a method that sounds new but has been used for decades to increase rainfall.
New Mexico depends on Colorado for part of its water supply taken from the Rocky Mountains and moved to the Rio Grande Basin, according to a report by KOB 4. New Mexico funds a program called cloud seeding that increases rainfall through weather modification.
Steve Wolff, the general manager at the South Western Water Conservation District, said the method has been useful for nearly 80 years.
“Cloud seeding has been worked on since I think the late '40s so there have been lots of small studies that have been going on to large studies that were done, one in Wyoming at the beginning of the century and one in Idaho really documented that clouded seeding works,” Wolff told KOB 4.
According to Wolff, silver iodine is inserted into the clouds during storm events to help increase the formation of ice crystals. The silver iodine helps make it rain and can produce 5 to 15% more water out of the storms.
“More water into the streams more water into the reserve, just more water available for all of us to be using, as you know given the current drought, the long term drought we have been in we are always looking for ways to come up with more water supply,” Wolff told KOB 4. “I think we will see more funds go to it, more people will look at it as a serious effort, looking at the price per-acre foot of water it’s a lot cheaper than building a new dam or doing other things that we typically think of when we think of increasing water supplies.”
