County Hires Firm for Cloud Seeding : Drought: The company will try to spur more rain. The process was halted years ago after mudslides.

Los Angeles County has resumed cloud seeding, more than a decade after the rainmaking program was discontinued amid complaints that it caused devastating mudslides in the San Gabriel foothills.

In light of California’s five-year drought, the Board of Supervisors has revived the program, and has required the weather modification company to take out a $10-million insurance policy.

That apparently was in response to a warning from the county counsel that “cloud seeding immediately adjacent to the second largest metropolitan area in the nation involves potential risks of very substantial liability.”

“What changed their (the supervisors’) minds is that we’ve had five extremely dry years here,” said Garvin Pederson, assistant engineer of the county Public Works Department’s hydraulic/water conservation division.

Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who had previously derided the weather modification technology as “voodoo machines,” said Wednesday that he has dropped his opposition to cloud seeding because of the water shortage.

“I am willing to look at any alternative to bring more water to the people,” said Hahn, who is scheduled to meet with Alaska Gov. Walter J. Hickel today to discuss building a 1,400-mile pipeline to bring water from Alaska to California.

In January, the board endorsed the establishment of an enhanced statewide cloud seeding program. Since the county’s $180,320 contract was signed last month with Utah-based North American Weather Consultants, the company has fired up its equipment once but the attempt produced no additional rainfall, officials said.

Although the storm season is nearing an end, the contract extends through next winter. County officials said they expect the cloud seeding to increase rainfall by 5% to 10%.

Cloud seeding was carried out over the San Gabriel Mountains throughout the 1960s and most of the ‘70s. The county halted the program in 1978 after numerous lawsuits were filed.

The suits claimed that the seeding intensified a major storm that killed 11 people and caused $43 million in property damage from mudslides. They alleged that seeding is “inherently dangerous” because of the “highly uncertain nature of the science . . . coupled with the highly unpredictable nature of the weather itself.”

The county prevailed in each of the damage suits.

County officials said they have taken steps to prevent a repeat of the 1978 controversy. “If it is going to be a gully washer, we would not cloud-seed,” said Orville McCollom, Public Works deputy director.

Ten generators have been set up in the San Gabriel foothills to spew a stream of microscopic particles of silver iodide--a rain-inducing chemical--into the air. The program is designed to increase runoff into county reservoirs in the San Gabriel Mountains. The water is then released into spreading grounds.

The county project brings to 20 the number of cloud-seeding programs in California, about double the usual number, said state hydrologist Maury Roos.

Los Angeles County is scheduled to act early next month to impose mandatory water rationing on the 250,000 residents in county water districts.