What counts as a critical system

The definitions at W.S. § 19-13-501(a)(vi) include water and wastewater treatment facilities and water distribution and conveyance systems including dams, along with electrical substations, transmission lines of 69,000 volts or more, and communication towers. There is also a catch-all: “(U) Any other facility or property deemed to be a critical infrastructure or critical system by the governor.”

That list reaches a category of Wyoming community infrastructure that most people would not describe as critical. A subdivision with its own small water system, a treatment or lift station, a storage tank, a conveyance line or an irrigation dam owns a critical system within the meaning of this statute.

The owner exception, and where its line falls

§ 19-13-503(c): exceptions include “(iii) The use of an unmanned aircraft system by the owner or the owner’s agent of critical infrastructure or a critical system on or near the owner’s critical infrastructure or critical system” and “(v) The use of an unmanned aircraft system by a private landowner on property owned by the private landowner.”

Two consequences follow from how those are worded, and both are descriptive of the statute rather than advice:

• Over ground the association owns — common area, a treatment site, a private road, the roof of a clubhouse — the association is the private landowner, and exception (v) is written for exactly that. Exception (iii) separately covers the owner or its agent operating over its own critical system.
• Over ground an individual lot owner owns, the association is not the landowner. An association drone survey of roofs, siding or defensible space across owners’ lots falls outside (v) on its face. The criminal prohibition in subsection (a) only attaches near critical infrastructure, so an ordinary lot flyover is not a § 19-13-503 offence — but the exception does not supply authority either, and Wyoming’s low-flight provision applies.

The act also adds W.S. § 10-4-303(d), making unlawful low or dangerous unmanned-aircraft flight a misdemeanour carrying up to six months and $750.

The inspection question this creates

Drone inspection is how roof condition, hail damage, wildfire fuel loading and defensible space are increasingly documented, and insurers now ask for that documentation — in Wyoming the Insurance Commissioner has described carriers contacting homeowners to require resiliency measures, and the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety brought its Wildfire Prepared Home standard to Wyoming in April 2026 with a five-foot noncombustible zone at its core.

The statute does not prohibit any of that. What it does is put a criminal provision around one category of flight — photography and loitering near water, wastewater and power infrastructure — and write its exceptions in terms of land ownership. Where a community’s treatment plant, tank or dam sits on association land, the association is inside the exception; where a contractor flies it, the contractor is operating as the owner’s agent under (c)(iii).

The veto

The bill-action record shows the veto on March 4, 2025 and the veto message received the same day. The Governor’s stated reasons are in a veto message that the Legislative Service Office publishes as a scanned document; this column has not read it and does not characterise it. What the record does establish is the outcome: both chambers overrode, and the act took effect the following day.