Saturday, August 30, 2025
After nearly four hours of educational presentation and passionate testimony, a legislative committee voted Thursday to draft legislation that could halt cloud seeding programs in Wyoming, ban geoengineering, and deliver a message to Congress.
The message the Joint Agriculture, State & Public Lands and Water Resources Committee voted in favor of drafting and potentially sending to Congress remained unclear to the public as the vote happened Thursday.
No lawmaker had read it aloud or described it ahead of the vote.
Resolution sponsor Rep. Mike Schmid, R-La Barge, told Cowboy State Daily in a later text that the proposed joint resolution would urge Congress to disallow unauthorized atmospheric geoengineering and weather modification over Wyoming.
The other two proposed bills, however, Schmid had described aloud during the committee. One would ban cloud seeding over Wyoming for 10 years while directing state officials to research precipitation and water, finding a baseline of those categories within nature.
The other would ban geoengineering over Wyoming such as stratospheric injection and solar radiation management, Schmid told the committee. It would exempt normal aviation, crop dusting, and fire suppression, he added.
Schmid handed the proposals to committee members moments before the vote.
The committee voted for its staffers at the Legislative Service Office to draft all three proposals into bills and a draft resolution.
In the 2025 legislative session, Wyoming pulled state funding for both ground and airborne cloud seeding programs.
The state authorized ground-based operations provided that 100% of the funding comes from Colorado River water users or other interested parties, Barry Lawrence, Wyoming Water Development Office Deputy Director of Planning, noted. ...
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.