Kenai Peninsula mayor's ordinance would regulate weather modification

The Kenai Peninsula Borough wants to regulate cloud seeding on its own land, and to ask the state to consider banning weather modification outright.

Mayor Peter Micciche is bringing two measures to the assembly Tuesday. One is an ordinance that would write weather modification and geoengineering into borough code for the first time, covering those activities on borough land. The agenda does not spell out what the rules or permit requirements would be. The other is a resolution urging the Legislature and governor to prohibit weather modification, or short of a ban, to require a permit, and asking Alaska's congressional delegation to strengthen federal law.

The ordinance would carry legal force on borough land. The resolution would not; it only asks Juneau and Washington to act.

The move follows a California company's claim this summer that it seeded clouds over the Kenai, which drew a cease-and-desist letter from a state representative and raised the question of who, if anyone, regulates the practice in Alaska. The answer so far has been almost no one.

The science is genuinely unsettled, and so is the vocabulary. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in December that cloud seeding "may increase water availability," with added precipitation in the studies it reviewed ranging from zero to 20 percent, and cautioned that the effects are hard to measure. It found that silver iodide, the compound most often used, does not appear to pose an environmental or health concern at current levels, though wider use could change that. Even whether cloud seeding counts as "geoengineering" is disputed: a British government body has said it should not.

A public hearing on the ordinance is set for Oct. 20, before the assembly votes on it.