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Water Plane Water district needs plane to seed plains WHITE DEER — With its weather modification season beginning, the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District is looking for a new airplane. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations approved the district's license for a rain-enhancement program for another four years, but without a 15-mile buffer zone around the district. Following complaints from residents in neighboring counties at a February hearing in Amarillo, the state agency clipped the district's wings. The district can fly over the neighboring counties, but they can't seed any clouds in those areas. The licensing department is also considering penalties against the district for seeding clouds in Briscoe County last year. District General Manager C.E. Williams said that at Briscoe County's request, the district had agreed not to seed in their county, which was part of the district's buffer zone at the time, but one of the district's planes had inadvertently strayed into the county when it made a seeding run. Williams took responsibility for the error. "It was my fault," he told his board of directors at their monthly meeting. He said they had changed meteorologists and he had neglected to tell the new meteorologist about the prohibition. Jennifer Wright, the district's meteorologist, said the computer track of the plane showed it went about a mile into Briscoe County. The district started its program in 2000. Its old permit expired March 13. The new permit is for four years. The problem the district faces now is that one of its two planes for cloud seeding is no longer airworthy and would cost as much or more to fix as to replace it, Williams said. He said he thinks selling it plus a prior insurance settlement should be enough to buy another plane. The district is talking to an organization in California about buying one of their twin-engine aircraft. Although it would be used, Williams said he expected the new-to-CRMWA plane to last five to six years. Should that deal fall through, Williams said, a weather-modification program in Kansas might lease a plane for the summer for about $15,000. "We will continue the program with two planes," he said. If the district can't get the twin-engine plane from California, he said, the drawback will be that, with two single engine planes, they won't be able to top-seed the clouds because none of the aircraft have the power to go high enough, but he said they would still be able to seed from beneath the clouds. The normal cloud-seeding season, Wright said, runs from mid-April through mid-September. Last year, they began flying in late March due to weather conditions. E-mail
comments about this story Posted: April 10, 2008
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