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Session of 2026
SENATE BILL No. 449
By Committee on Federal and State Affairs
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AN ACT concerning weather modification; enacting the clean air
preservation act; prohibiting solar radiation modification,
geoengineering, weather modification, cloud setting and other polluting
atmospheric experiments or interventions; creating a crime for violation
thereof and imposing penalties thereto; repealing the Kansas weather
modification act; repealing K.S.A. 82a-1401, 82a-1402, 82a-1403, 82a-
1405, 82a-1406, 82a-1407, 82a-1408, 82a-1409, 82a-1410, 82a-1411,
82a-1412, 82a-1413, 82a-1414, 82a-1415, 82a-1416, 82a-1417, 82a-
1418, 82a-1419, 82a-1420, 82a-1421, 82a-1422, 82a-1423, 82a-1424
and 82a-1425.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Kansas:
New Section 1. (a) This section shall be known and may be cited as
the clean air preservation act.
(b) As used in this act, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise:
(1) "Air national guard" means the Kansas air national guard, which
is the aerial militia of the state of Kansas.
(2) "Artificial intelligence" means a field of science and technology
encompassing systems and tools that can perform tasks typically requiring
human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, pattern recognition and
decision-making, often through computational techniques like machine
learning and neural networks.
(3) "Atmospheric activity" means any experiment or intervention
involving the release of pollutants, conducted by any iteration of human,
machine learning or artificial intelligence, or any combination thereof, that
occurs in the atmosphere and may have harmful consequences upon
health, the environment or agriculture.
(4) "Chaff" means aluminum-coated silica glass fibers typically
dispersed in bundles containing 5,000,000 through 100,000,000 inhalable
fibers that fall to the ground in about one day, or for nano-chaff, years, and
then fall and break apart. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances,
known also as forever chemicals, are an ingredient in chaff.
(5) "Cloud seeding" means a type of precipitation by dispersing
chemicals or aluminum into the atmosphere by means of aircraft or
ground generators.
(6) "Entity" means an individual, trust, firm, joint stock company,
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corporation, including a quasi-governmental corporation,
nongovernmental organization, partnership, association, syndicate, fire
district, club, nonprofit corporation, commission, postsecondary
educational institution, governmental entity, any interstate or international
governance or instrumentality of the federal government, including
foreign, domestic and mercenary armed services or region with the United
States, artificial intelligence or any other legal or commercial entity.
(7) "Geoengineering" means the intentional large-scale alteration or
manipulation of the environment, typically involving the release of
aerosols, chemicals, chemical compounds, electromagnetic radiation or
other physical agents that increase air pollution and effect changes to
earth's atmosphere or surface, including solar radiation modification,
sunlight reflection methods, climate intervention, stratospheric aerosol
injection, cirrus cloud thinning, marine cloud brightening or cloud seeding.
(8) "Hazard" means a substance or physical agent that by its nature is
harmful to living organisms, generally, or to property or another interest of
value.
(9) "Intervention" means the act of interfering with weather
processes, altering atmospheric or environmental conditions or releasing
pollutants by methods that include, but are not limited to, solar radiation
modification, sunlight reflection methods, stratospheric aerosol injection,
marine cloud brightening, cirrus cloud thinning, weather modification,
cloud seeding and outdoor pollution dispersion modeling.
(10) "Law enforcement officer" means the same as defined in K.S.A.
12-16,139, and amendments thereto.
(11) "Machine learning" means the process in which a machine can
learn on its own without being explicitly programmed.
(12) "Physical agent" means an agent other than a substance,
including, but not limited to, radiofrequency or microwave radiation and
other electromagnetic radiation and fields, barometric pressure,
temperature, gravity, kinetic weaponry, mechanical vibration and sound.
(13) "Pollutant" means aerosol, biologic or genetically modified
agent, chaff, metal, radioactive material, acid, alkali, chemical, chemical
compound, containment, microelectronic mechanical systems or smart
dust, smoke, soot, substance, fume, vapor, air pollutant regulated by the
state of Kansas, mechanical vibration or other physical agent, particulate,
waste, including materials that may be recycled, reconditioned or
reclaimed, solid liquid, gaseous or thermal irritant or artificially produced
electric field, magnetic field, electromagnetic field, electromagnetic pulse,
sound wave, sound pollution, light pollution, microwave radiation or
ionizing or non-ionizing radiation.
(14) "Release" means any activity that results in the issuance of
contaminants such as the emitting, transmitting discharging or injecting of
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one or more nuclear, biological, trans-biological, chemical or physical
agents into the ambient atmosphere, whether once, intermittently of
continuously.
(15) "Solar radiation modification" or "sunlight reflection methods"
means an experiment in the earth's climatic system involving the release of
pollutants that reduces the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface.
"Solar radiation modification" or "sunlight reflection methods" involves
the use of interoperable ground-based, airborne and space-based facilities.
(16) "Weather engineering" means the deliberate manipulation of the
environment for purposes that include changing the weather or climate by
artificial means, typically involving the release of pollutants into the
atmosphere through or by means of cloud seeing, for small-scale, large-
scale and global-scale alterations of the environment.
(17) "Weather modification" means changing, controlling or
interfering with or attempting to alter, control or interfere with the natural
development of cloud forms, precipitation, barometric pressure
temperature, conductivity or other electromagnetic or sonic characteristics
of the atmosphere.
(c) (1) All government and military projects shall meet the
requirements of this act. If any activity deemed hazardous by this act has
been approved, explicitly or implicitly, by the federal government, a law
enforcement agency shall issue a notice to the appropriate federal agency
that the activity cannot lawfully be carried out within or over the state of
Kansas.
(2) Law enforcement agencies shall implement this act, which shall
include determining whether violations of this act have occurred and, if
deemed necessary, referring potentially prohibited activity to the air
national guard. Within 120 days after the enactment of this act, law
enforcement agencies and the air national guard shall develop a policy to
determine the process for assessment of violations and the enforcement
procedure.
(3) If deemed necessary, the air national guard may interdict
document identification tail numbers, secure photographic evidence,
sample aerosolized effluents or particulates, utilize mass spectrometers and
other appropriation scientific instrumentation and engage with an aircraft
violating this act to escort such aircraft to the nearest airport for
investigation, securing of evidence and documentation of violation.
(4) Solar radiation modification and other atmospheric
experimentation methods include the use of interoperable ground-based,
airborne and space-based facilities and heightened radiation levels.
Communications facilities shall be subject to evaluation by an independent
licensed radiofrequency engineer paid for by the facility owner. Evaluation
shall include current purposes and future capabilities of facilities,
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including potential uses of artificial intelligence.
(5) The radiofrequency engineer shall provide findings in a report to
be submitted to local law enforcement agencies. The radiation signal
strength metered at the reported location shall not exceed -75 decibel-
milliwatt for any frequency or channel band specified by a transmitting
entity's United States federal communications commission transmission
license. If signal strength metered by the radiofrequency engineer is in
excess of -75 decibel-milliwatt, the facility operator shall have 30 days to
achieve compliance without disruption to performance of personal
wireless services. Law enforcement agencies shall perform random testing
from time to time to ensure facility compliance with this act. Failure to
comply shall result in a fine of not more than $50,000 per day for each day
that the facility is not in compliance. Deliberate falsification or altering of
information related to this section shall constitute a violation of this act.
All entities operating in the state of Kansas shall comply with the
requirements of this section.
(d) An entity that engages in a polluting atmospheric intervention or
uses an unmarked or unidentified aircraft or any other vehicle or facility to
carry out a weather engineering or other polluting intervention shall:
(1) Be guilty of a severity level 7 felony and pay a fine of not to
exceed $100,000 if a corporation, the officers, directors or employees of
such corporation commit such felony or a fine of not to exceed $5,000 if
an aircraft operator or controller commits such felony;
(2) be guilty of a separate offense for each day that prohibited activity
has been conducted, repeated or continued; and
(3) be deemed in violation of this act and be subject to any further
penalties of Kansas pollution laws.
Sec. 2. K.S.A. 82a-1401, 82a-1402, 82a-1403, 82a-1405, 82a-1406,
82a-1407, 82a-1408, 82a-1409, 82a-1410, 82a-1411, 82a-1412, 82a-1413,
82a-1414, 82a-1415, 82a-1416, 82a-1417, 82a-1418, 82a-1419, 82a-1420,
82a-1421, 82a-1422, 82a-1423, 82a-1424 and 82a-1425 are hereby
repealed.
Sec. 3. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its
publication in the statute book.
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