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Expert: 'Cloud-seeding not hurting south-east'

There is further assurance that a big cloud-seeding trial in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains is not affecting rainfall in the State's south-east.

Snowy Hydro is mid-way through a seven-year expanded program to increase snowfall over winter in an attempt to boost spring run-off into high country lakes.

A number of environmentalists and farmers have criticised the program, saying cloud-seeding is contributing to the region's on-going drought.

But the Director of the Australian Centre for Sustainable Catchments, Climatologist Professor Roger Stone, says the dry weather is due to other causes.

"Almost all the reasons for the drought in southern Australia, including the Monaro, is caused by patterns further afield," he said.

"So out there in the central Pacific and up on the Equator, that's the problem we have rather than just something local."

- ABC

© ABC 2009

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