Scott Morris has come to town to make it rain.
“The Colorado River is a really important river in the U.S. … Itap very important to a number of states, and itap suffering right now,” he said.
Morris, chief technical officer for Rain Enhancement Technologies, told BusinessDen his company has leased a 4,050-square-foot warehouse space in Brighton.
Rain’s technology seeds clouds using electricity, not chemicals, to increase rainfall and snowpack. Its devices are currently operational in Weld County, Colorado, and Moab, Utah.
“Basically, we add an electrical charge to passing aerosols. The aerosols come up to the clouds. The clouds have water molecules and ice form around the charged aerosols, and then thatap what creates more precipitation,” Morris said.
Those aerosols, he added, are “natural pollutants and contaminants that are in the air anyway,” from dust to tiny particles released from factories. Rain’s solar-powered devices release an electric charge from antennas to give the particles “a little bit of spice.”
“We can’t form a cloud from nothing,” Morris said. “All we’re doing is putting a little bit of a charge, a little bit of spice on the particles as they get carried up, so that there’s more attraction and there’s more activity in the cloud.”
Results so far have been promising. In Moab, Rain saw a 20% increase in snow-water equivalent in its first winter season last year, Morris said. In Weld County, the data is still preliminary, but signs are pointing to an increase in rainfall.
The company is hoping to start another project next month in northwest Colorado’s Yampa River Basin, backed by a grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
In the future, Rain hopes to work with ski resorts and farmers to help them combat warm winters and dry summers. People and businesses can buy the device outright for $750,000 or lease it for as little as $100,000 annually. The company is engineering a portable cloud seeder that can be deployed on a trailer.
“We would love to have 10 to 20 people employed locally to help with that,” Morris said.
The company leased the warehouse space at 854 Baseline Place in Brighton in April, according to building owner Aviva Sonenreich.
“We just happen to have one of the cheapest rents in the area,” she said.
Sonenreich and her husband, Josh Sonenreich, of industrial investor/brokerage Warehouse Hotline, purchased the 16,200-square-foot building last year for $1.8 million before it went into foreclosure.
Brighton, with its easy access to the airport and interstates 25 and 76, has become a red-hot industrial market, she said.
“Itap actually one of the most expensive markets in the Denver metro area. Itap not more affordable than Denver at all.”
Morris, who is from Australia, where the system was originally designed and built, said he one of the reasons he chose Colorado was because of Denver International Airport.
“Denver airportap a big hub within the country, so lots of flights in and out, pretty much connect anywhere from Denver. So itap easy for our people,” he said.
Morris also seems to have grown fond of Brighton itself.
“You drive past on those freeways and see all the car dealerships and gas stations and industrial lots and go, ‘Oh, itap a very industrial area,’ which is fine for us. But then they’ve got – between all the railway lines – that really cute little town with lots of great places to eat and drink. And I’m like, score!”
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