Water agencies across the West, including in Southern California, have for decades shot silver iodide into clouds from cannons and airplanes. The theory is that the particles make the clouds drop even more snow than would fall otherwise. But there is very little scientific evidence that it works. “You do get the question, how much snow did we make? I can’t really tell you. I don’t really know.” said Chris Harris, executive director of the Colorado River Board, a California state agency that represents Southern California water agencies on Colorado River issues and spends up to $250,000 annually on cloud seeding in the Rocky Mountains.

When Californians overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1 in 2014, voters made clear their desire for additional water storage in anticipation of future droughts. Opportunities to build significant storage occur only once or twice in a century. The state must not let this one slip away. The California Water Commission has an obligation to fulfill the state’s commitment to voters when it announces in July which projects, if any, will receive the $2.7 billion authorized in the $7.5 billion bond measure.

For California governor Jerry Brown and his administration, 2017 was a water year to remember, and one that would figure into the drafting of the state’s 2018-19 budget, which was released early this month. The $190 billion proposed spending plan names California’s drought and the “extreme natural events of 2017” as determining factors in how the cash was divvied up.