There is no agreement with United Air Lines. We participate with them to the extent of receiving information with respect to their procedures, techniques, and their success.

Senator BREWSTER. Do you know what success they have achieved, if any?

Mr. BLATT. Yes. They have had considerable success. They have reported that with respect to their operations they are getting a benefit-to-cost ratio of 5 to 1. That is, the cost of seeding, the cost of dispersal, is approximately one-fifth their estimated cost of the diversions that would have been created had they not done this type of weather modification work.

Senator BREWSTER. In the second paragraph of page 2 of your summary, you used the words "achieved limited success." " In those words do you refer to the United Air Lines program?

Mr. BLATT. No. That is with respect to ground-based techniques. United Air Lines techniques are all with respect to the seeding from an aircraft. The techniques referred to in that paragraph were ground based, such as tethered balloons, rockets, vertical-facing blowers, things of that nature.

Senator BREWSTER. Well, with ground-based activities have we actually opened an airport that would otherwise be fogbound?

Mr. BLATT. Yes, we have. But the success has been extremely limited. The size of the hole created in the fog varies greatly. The movement of the hole, being able to place the hole in a position so that the winds will move the hole over the approach area, is too restricted with ground-based aids. You have much more variability and flexibility with respect to aircraft seeding.

Senator BREWSTER. The statement has been made with reference to aircraft seeding that FAA regulations are far too restrictive and companies or airlines are not able to carry out programs they want to because of your restrictions. Would you comment on that?

Mr. BLATT. Our regulations do restrict operations in questionable weather conditions. However, this, is of course, for the safety of the aircraft and aviation as a whole. However, the regulations do permit waivers for experimentation purposes and for the furthering of these techniques.

So I would have to comment by saying that I do not feel that the regulations restrict the operations unduly.

Senator BREWSTER. Are you aware that the statement in the National Science Foundation reports, and I quote:

FAA and Air Force regulation is overly restrictive in testing various possible fog dissipation techniques?

Mr. BLATT. I am aware, yes, sir. I do not believe that our regulations are overly restrictive.

Senator BREWSTER. Now, sir, one last question. In your full statement at the bottom of page 4 you say that the ICAS has requested that the FAA recommend a technical plan for cold fog dispersal and then conclude by saying that plan is currently being developed.

Is that some form of "government-ese," or where is this plan now and when will somebody see it?

Mr. BLATT. The Interdepartmental Committee on Atmospheric Sciences has charged the Federal Aviation Agency with the responsi

bility of developing a coordinated Government-wide plan for the application of the techniques for cold fog, supercooled fog dispersal. We in the Federal Aviation Agency are at the present time developing such a plan and are coordinating the plan with other governmental agencies concerned.

We hope to be able to submit this plan to ICAS early in the fall of this year.

Senator BREWSTER. Thank you very much, sir.

Senator Neuberger.

Senator NEUBERGER. No questions.

Senator BREWSTER. Thank you very much.

Mr. BLATT. Thank you, sir.

Senator BREWSTER. Do we have Mr. Howell here? Mr. Wallace E. Howell, president of W. E. Howell Associates, Inc., of Lexington, Mass.

Mr. Howell, welcome to this hearing. We are very happy to have you here, sir.

STATEMENT OF WALLACE E. HOWELL, PRESIDENT, W. E. HOWELL ASSOCIATES, INC., LEXINGTON, MASS.

Mr. HOWELL. Thank you very much, Senator Brewster.

I am Wallace Howell, president of W. E. Howell Associates, Inc., a private meteorological firm specializing in cloud physics and weather modification, and president of the Mount Washington Observatory, Inc., a private nonprofit corporation in New Hampshire.

In the past 16 years I have been involved in some 60-odd weather modification programs chiefly concerned with reducing weather modification to a useful practice and applying it in situations where its economic leverage overcomes the uncertainties involved.

These operations have been mostly in eastern North America, Latin America, and the Philippine Islands.

I have three points that I would like to make before this committee, premised on the start already made on a weather modification program and on its potentialities being such as to deserve national concern. My three points are:

1. The importance of a pluralistic approach to a national program of weather modification.

2. The importance of private initiative in reducing weather modification to useful practice.

3. The importance of separating the regulation of weather modification from its operation.

With regard to the first point, the national program should pursue a pluralistic approach under flexibly coordinated guidance with simultaneous drive toward several coordinate goals.

Unless the objectives that we now have in view fail completely, this Nation is committed unavoidably to an undertaking in the field of modification of which the operational, economic and social magnitudes will tremendously overshadow the seminal role of pure science. In this, science alone is not a sufficient guide.

If in testing the scientific foundations we neglect the other foundations of this undertaking, we risk our best chance to build a well balanced and effective national program.

Already some others have noted gaps. Dr. Schaefer submitted to this committee, I understand, a paper in which he noted that the engineering phase cannot wait for a perfect understanding of the scientific phases.

Dr. Malone also noted that the development and evaluation of techniques of applied research are an outstanding gap.

The evaluation of applications is something that I believe must be undertaken in the round with reference to all the impacts on all the various end uses.

In the area of science the channeling of adequate support to a few major research efforts should not be allowed to deprive alternative ideas not in accord with the majority view of encouragement.

Ten years ago, when this subject was last heard before a committee of the Senate, the idea that cloud seeding might be effective over flat ground through indirect effects on the clouds was discounted by recognized bodies of scientific opinion. Today this is one of the hottest ideas in the weather modification.

At that time it was recommended that we must know exactly how silver iodide forms ice crystals if we are to know how to use it. Today we recognize that it does form ice crystals even though we do not completely understand how, and the fact that it does is being recognized as something that we must investigate through use.

These are but two examples of cases where oddball ideas have turned out to be the most valuable, and some of those that have been officially most encouraged have perhaps not developed as well as hoped,

Reduction of weather modification to useful practice should encompass many climatic settings, many practices, many techniques, many end uses, through which and to which it may be exercised.

In the cases that I have been personally connected with, we have seeded clouds from midcontinent to midocean, from subarctic to the Equator, from plains near sea level to mountains over 18,000 feet high, from deserts to one of the world's rainiest jungles. Not only the settings but the purposes have been equally varied: to fight forest fires, protect banana trees from blowdown, carry a sugar crop through a dry season, supply water to hydroelectric plants, some of these uses very occasional, some of them covering a great deal of the time.

A single program may involve many different kinds of impacts. In 1950 when New York City conducted an experimental program and asked me to direct it, a country club complained it did not want its guests scared away by rain. The Palisades Amusement Park offered me double pay to stop the rain. But I went ahead with the point of view of learning what could be learned-here a trial for one specific purpose, to alleviate shortage.

There are perhaps hundreds of different uses that need to be explored. This trial was carried out in one place, the Catskills under one unique set of conditions. How many other thousands of combinations of conditions, locations, and uses are there that need to be investigated before we know where it is appropriate to use weather modification-and techniques as well, bringing in skill as another

factor?

This operation ran into one particular conflict of interest, one set of social and political circumstances. How many others need to be

explored before we know how a national program should be developed and how are they to be explored other than through use?

Explicit recognition should be given to the value of international cooperation in both basic and applied weather modification by authorizing support of selected programs through foreign aid and other international channels.

I am leaving early tomorrow morning for a conference in Bogotá and another in Lima with reference to what are the actual uses to which weather can be put in actual settings, not in the idea of setting up a weather service because it is a good idea to set up a weather service, but to find out who is actually using weather forecasts, in what

way.

These explorations with reference to weather modification need to be developed in many places, because some places are peculiarly advantageous to one use or another, and all the information gained in such experiences feeds back to the development of our own national program.

The diverse interests of the Government, the scientific community, private initiative, and social and political entities outside the Federal Government should all be directly represented in the top advisory board responsible for guidance of the national weather modification program.

Nearly 9 years ago, in 1957, with the recommendation for passage of S. 86, the message with which the Senate committee recommended this passage recognized very clearly the partnership between pure research, basic science, and applied research.

The program of applied research envisaged in that message was never realized. Why not? I think Dr. Haworth the other day gave a substantial part of the answer when he said that by the time it came to institute this program the only general agreement that could be obtained within the scientific community was that there should be basic research.

Furthermore, the task was given to the National Science Foundation which had itself said that it was interested in basic and not applied

research.

But what is this scientific community of which Dr. Haworth spoke? My own belief is that when the Advisory Committee on Weather Control disbanded, the breadth of experience, the breadth of outlook in practical meteorology which it represented was lost and has not yet been restored.

I note that, of the scientific committees listed at the back of the NSF seventh annual report, confirmation of the list of committees I have drawn up in my statement here, none of these committees carries representatives of the point of view of applied meteorology, the task of developing experience through useful applications.

Included in this statement are

Committee on Atmospheric Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences.

Panel on Weather and Climate Modification of the National Academy of Sciences.

Advisory Panel on Weather Modification of the National Science Foundation.

Special Commission of the NSF.

University Committee, now University Corp. for Atmospheric Research.

Executive Committee for Meteorology of the AGU.
Committee on Cloud Physics of the AGU.

Committee on Cloud Physics of the American Meteorological
Society.

Committee on Weather Modification of the American Meteorological Society.

These committees constitute the consensus of the scientific community, but they have not represented a broad point of view with respect to the development of what I visualize might be a national program in weather modification.

I believe, therefore, that legislation should provide specifically for restoration of this balance through representation of the point of view that I believe is going to be extremely necessary in future developments.

So much for my first main point of a pluralistic approach.

A second main point is the role of private initiative in reducing weather modification to useful practice and in the exercise of this practice should be given explicit recognition and encouragement.

When I read the statements that have preceded mine, I feel a bit like the princess resting on top of 17 thick mattresses of statements, and under the 17 I feel that there is a pearl of great value not

a pea.

About $5 billion was spent in 1965 by U.S. industry on research and development. Up to 1957 an increasing share of this was flowing toward weather modification. By the statements developed at that time, the attitudes of government developed at that time, this trend was reversed, and the flow of these funds was reduced to a trickle.

And yet it is that trickle, carried on by private industry as best it could under the circumstances, that provided the conclusions which Dr. Hollomon speaking here the other day was able to refer to as having been verified by the National Academy of Sciences report as demonstrating positive values from weather modification.

The NAS did indeed verify these reports, but it was not brought out in my opinion that the work sprang from private initiative carried on despite discouragement and disparagement from official sources and that the verification was the right word-that they did find the conclusions reached from these private experiences were substantially correct.

And so it is my opinion that private entities when they undertake to integrate their own efforts to reduce weather modification to a useful practice, with the purposes and requirements of a national weather modification program, should be specifically recognized as playing an organic role in the national weather modification program, and as such they should receive compensation in certain specific forms: 1. Scientific advice of the best that can be given.

2. Support for additional scientific observations and operations not a normal part of an operational program.

3. Evaluation by an appropriate public and disinterested agency of the scientific, economic, and social results of the operation.

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