Panel tables geoengineering ban after debate over cloud seeding, monitoring and costs

The Minerals, Business & Economic Development Committee took testimony on House Bill 208, a proposal to prohibit atmospheric geoengineering and require state testing of sites subject to geoengineering, and ultimately tabled the bill pending further study.

Vice Chair Ruben Tarver, who introduced the bill, said it reflects constituent concern about spraying particles into the atmosphere to alter temperature or precipitation and that the measure was modeled on recently enacted legislation in another state. “It just puts in place testing requirements so we can at least get a benchmark and start the measuring process,” Tarver said.

Several state officials and technical witnesses told the committee the bill, as drafted, would curtail or conflict with existing cloud seeding programs and that the state lacks the monitoring network and agreed methodologies called for in the text.

Jason Meade, director of the Water Development Office, and Barry Lawrence, deputy director for planning, summarized Wyoming’s cloud seeding operations and defended the program as a long-running tool for snowpack augmentation. Lawrence said the state’s…