Misinformation and confusion fueled a recent Wyoming legislative meeting on how to stop chemtrails, a debunked conspiracy that claims the government is controlling our health with airborne chemicals.
The Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources interim meeting quickly slipped from its scheduled two hours into the eighth hour on Monday, Oct. 27.
“We at some point probably should take a break either for lunch or bathroom,” said Sen. Barry Crago (R-Buffalo).
The 13 lawmakers went around and around on how to stop chemtrails in Wyoming’s skies. They narrowed in on three different bills. But legislating something that isn’t proven to exist was pretty tricky.
“Yeah, I'm getting kind of confused here a little bit,” said Sen. Bob Ide (R-Casper).
Dozens and dozens of suggestions blended into each other.
“What are we voting on?,” Rep. Pepper Ottman (R-Riverton) whispered to a colleague.
Lawmakers were lost in the flurry of sometimes contradictory and legally murky amendments.
“I don't know, I don't even know how I voted,” said Sen. Laura Pearson (R-Kemmerer).
Some even retroactively changed votes.
“Is that legit?,” Ide asked the Legislative Service Office (LSO).
It was legit.
And ultimately, two draft items passed, a bill and a resolution, the latter is an unenforceable formal ask to the U.S. Congress to take action.
The legislation attempts to ban whatever and whomever is creating the chemtrails – tasking the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (WYDEQ) with figuring that out. WYDEQ said that would require two additional full time employees and at least $500,000 of state funds over the next two years.
Rep. Karlee Provenza (D-Laramie) consistently voted no on the draft proposals.
“If you want to grow government and waste a bunch of time and money, that's what I think we're doing here,” Provenza said.
Committee Chair and Rep. John Winter (R-Thermopolis) asked Provenza what she proposes the solution is to the chemtrails.
“I don’t think that there is a problem,” she responded.
Provenza said what her colleagues think is a covert government poisoning that’s deteriorating health and causing changes in weather, is actually explained by established science.
“It’s climate change. And yeah, you can shake your head,” Provenza said to her colleagues. “But I'll tell you most scientists agree with me. And there aren't a ton of PhD scientists here today or medical professionals telling me that we're being poisoned.”
At times, Provenza was joined by her colleagues Sen. Crago, Sen. Taft Love (R-Cheyenne) and Rep. Bob Davis (R-Baggs) in voicing skepticism on the legislation.
“What's the process of actually stopping the airplanes that are flying over our state doing this?,” said Crago. “If we're going to do this, we
need to be able to actually enforce it.”
No one had a clear answer, including the WYDEQ. The state agency would be assigned with monitoring “aircraft, drones, balloons, rockets, artillery, space-based platforms or ground-based facilities” for intentional release of chemicals into the atmosphere, per the draft bill passed titled ‘Prohibiting unauthorized atmospheric geoengineering’.
Geoengineering is any intentional “attempt to cool the Earth or remove certain gases from the atmosphere”, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Most of these technologies are still being researched and aren’t deployable at commercial scale, like direct air capture. Others are theoretical, like solar geoengineering. The practice would “modify the atmosphere to shade Earth’s surface by reflecting sunlight back into space”, but the EPA says it’s not happening at scale “anywhere in the world”.
However, a handful of concerned Wyomingites and lobbyists testified to lawmakers that they think otherwise. They believe the government is intentionally modifying weather for harm.
“Weather is being used for a weapon,” said Dane Wigington, a national leader who pushes the chemtrail narrative. “We have Jamaica being annihilated right now as we speak from a cat[egory] five hurricane.”
The science community widely accepts that climate change is causing hurricanes to intensify. Additionally, the federal government maintains weather modification isn’t being used as a weapon.
However, Sen. Pearson strongly felt otherwise saying, “you can call me a conspiracy theorist.”
Pearson spoke about the chemtrails she sees in the Wyoming sky. Scientists have proven they are contrails, a well understood phenomenon of jet exhaust mixing with cold temperatures. It looks like streaks of clouds, and can stick around for a while, depending how saturated the air is.
But, Pearson said she’s noticed less of the formations during the federal government shutdown.
“I feel in a lot of ways our Department of Defense is doing a lot of this to us,” she said.
The Trump administration’s EPA says chemtrails aren’t real. It even created a webpage to address the conspiracy.
Cloud seeding was also tied up in the Wyoming legislation. The technology is used to augment snowpack, and skeptics think it could be harmful.
To cloud seed, scientists inject winter clouds, either by plane or from the ground, with silver-iodide. It’s a salt-like mixture that’s shown to not hurt humans or the environment in quantities used for the practice.
When cloud seeding works, it puts a little more snow on the ground during a storm, about 10% more. Wyoming has been doing it for at least two decades, as it’s considered a “tool in the toolbox” for helping the drought-stricken Colorado River system.
Last legislative session, lawmakers banned aerial cloud seeding and defunded the ground operations. It’s up to Wyoming water groups, municipalities and industry, as well as other Colorado River states, to foot the bill for the 2026 season.
But some lawmakers want to see cloud seeding come to a complete halt. One of the draft bills would’ve banned the practice for the next decade.
“I would ask that we consider to allow cloud seeding to continue for the next several years because right now probably more than any is a critical time for us on the Colorado River,” said Brad Brooks, who helps oversee Cheyenne’s water and sits on a Colorado River workgroup.
Brooks said if curtailments go into effect on the Colorado River system, his city is likely facing a reality of half the water it normally is used to.
“I plead with you again to please consider that,” Brooks said to lawmakers considering the cloud seeding ban.
That bill failed. Additionally, cloud seeding related language was omitted from the draft bill that moved forward. Although some speculated language in the bill could still encompass cloud seeding and other legitimate practices, like, ski resort snowmaking, agriculture crop dusting, chemical pest control and wildfire treatments with aerial retardant.
Amendments were passed to try to protect those specific practices, other than cloud seeding.
Some on the committee questioned the legality of the draft bill and resolution that moved out of the interim committee. Regardless, it will need a two-thirds majority to be considered for law in the February legislative session.
