Weather Modification Advisory Committee

Meeting of December 8, 2016

North Campus Building – 1st Floor Public Meeting Room

1106 Clayton Lane, Suite 125E, Austin, Texas

Summary of Minutes

Presiding Officer,Frank Reilly, called the meeting to order at 10:00a.m.and a quorum was recognized consisting of Frank Reilly, JamesNance, and Gary Foster. Board member Alan Zeman was absent.

Presiding Officer,Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item C., Training for Committee Members (1) Open Meetings Act; (2) Public Information Act; and (3) Administrative Procedure Act. Brad Bowman, TDLR’s General Counsel, provided the Committee with training on the Open Meetings Act, the Public Information Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Presiding Officer, Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item D., Approval of Minutes – Meeting of August 11, 2016. Committee member Gary Foster, secondedbyJames Nance, made a motion to approve the minutes as presented. Motion passed by unanimous vote.

Presiding Officer,Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item E., Public Comment. There was no public comment.

Presiding Officer, Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item F.1., Staff Reports - Executive Office. George Ferrie reported for the Executive Director on the transfer of executive leadership at TDLR on September 1, 2016: Bill Kuntz retired as Executive Director—and the Commission named his deputy, Brian Francis, as his successor. Recently, the agency hired two new members as part of the agency’s Executive leadership, Carla James, Deputy Executive Director and Nick Voinis as the Chief of Staff.

Presiding Officer,Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item F.2., Staff Reports – Office of Innovation. Program Specialist George Bomar gave the following staff reports:TDLR renewed weather modification licenses for FY 2017 for seven applicants, effective September 1, 2016. Total acreage within cloud-seeding target areas in 2016 was 26,634,572, which represents 15.7 percent of the land area of Texas. The maximum acreage for cloud seeding operations occurred in 2001, with 51,018,872 acres representing 30.1 percent of Texas’ land area; the weather modification community lost a valuable and esteemed member when Hans Ahlness, Vice President of Operations for Weather Modification Inc., was killed after the Cessna 340 he was piloting crashed short of the Fargo ND airport’s runway on Dec. 1, 2016. Ahlness, 55, had served as the pilot for cloud-seeding experiments in Big Spring TX as part of the Bureau of Reclamation-sponsored TEXARC weather-modification research program in 1995; the nation of Vietnam is spending $224 million on a network of 100 sea-going vessels and aircraft to pump sea water for use in cloud modification efforts to yield more rainfall during drought—as well as alleviating flooding by promoting rainfall release by clouds over the sea, rather than inland; and a 2016 survey of 77 atmospheric chemists and geochemists in the U. S. revealed that virtually all of them (98.7 percent) say there is no evidence of any “secret large-scale atmospheric program” (SLAP), also commonly referred to as “chemtrails” or “covert geoengineering.”

Presiding Officer,Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item G., Field Meteorologists Report on ongoing weather modification activities in 2016. George Bomar, Program Specialist, informed the Committee that the person who was going to give the report was not able to make the meeting due to inclement weather in San Angelo. The Committee had no questions regarding this agenda item.

Presiding Officer,Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item H., Consideration and possible recommendation on an application for renewal of a weather modification permit: South Texas Weather Modification Association. George Bomar presented the permit-renewal applicationofthe South Texas Weather Modification Association. The South Texas Weather Modification Association (STWMA), based in Pleasanton, is seeking a new, 4-year rain-enhancement permit from TDLR to replace a current permit due to expire in March 2017. The STWMA has submitted an application and fee payment, along with an Operations Plan and Notice of Intention (to be published in newspapers beginning in mid-December). The only change proposed in planned operations beginning in 2017 is an alteration to one of the suspension criteria, to read as follows:

“Any Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for Bexar County will result in suspension of seeding on thatparticular warned cell until the warning has expired. For all other counties within the target area, when aSevere Thunderstorm Warning is issued, seeding operations may continue for a maximum of 20 minutes.After 20 minutes from the time the Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued, seeding operations on thestorm with the warning will suspend. Seeding operations will resume after the warning expires if conditionswarrant.”

After a discussion about the merits of the proposed change, the Committee Member Pat Nance, seconded by Gary Foster, made a motion torecommend that the permit be issued, with the proposed change in suspension criteria—on the condition that STWMA completes publication of the Notice of Intention and no subsequent requests are made from those living in the affected areas (10 counties, 5.1 million acres) for a public hearing. Motion passed by unanimous vote.

Presiding Officer, Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item I, Recommendations for agenda items for the next committee meeting: George Bomar stated that license renewal applications for the new (2018) fiscal year would need to be reviewed and considered at the next Committee meeting.

Presiding Officer, Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item J, Discussion of date, time, and location of the next Committee meeting. The next Committee meeting date was set for June 22, 2017 at 10:00 a.m.

Presiding Officer, Frank Reilly, moved to agenda item J, Adjournment. The meeting was adjourned at 10:56 a.m.

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Frank Reilly, Presiding Officer

Weather Modification Advisory Committee