A Williamstown resident's application to artificially induce rainfall over his own property has been rejected by the Victorian government, after officials confirmed the activity remains tightly regulated under a 1967 act most Victorians are unaware still exists.

The Rain-making Control Act 1967, introduced to manage cloud-seeding operations during a period of experimental weather modification research, requires anyone intending to "induce or increase precipitation" by artificial means to first obtain a licence from the relevant minister, a requirement that has applied, with essentially no public attention, for close to sixty years.

The applicant, who runs a small backyard vegetable patch he describes as "underwatered, structurally," submitted a request to use a handheld atmospheric mister he had read about online, intending to generate what he called "a light, localised drizzle, nothing dramatic, just enough for the tomatoes."

"I didn't think it would be an issue," he said. "It's my backyard. I wasn't trying to seed a cloud over Yarraville. I just wanted some gentle moisture for about forty minutes on a Tuesday."

The application was declined on the basis that the Act makes no distinction between large-scale meteorological intervention and a private resident's handheld misting device, both falling, in the department's words, under "artificial precipitation inducement," a category requiring the same licensing regardless of scale or ambition.

"They said my proposed thirty-square-metre drizzle zone would be assessed under the same framework as commercial cloud-seeding," he said. "I did ask if there was a smaller form for smaller rain. There isn't."

A department spokesperson confirmed the Act remains in force and is occasionally invoked, though almost always in relation to agricultural or research cloud-seeding proposals rather than residential gardening. "This is, as far as we're aware, the first application of this kind," the spokesperson said. "It has been assessed on its merits, like any other."

The applicant has since returned to watering the tomatoes by hand, a method he notes "requires no licence, which I've now specifically checked."

Asked whether he planned to reapply, he said he was considering it, "once I've had a look at what a commercial rain-making licence actually involves, purely out of curiosity."