The width, and the vegetation right

Two subsections define the burden on the land.

§ 34-1-159(d): “The width of an easement granted under this section shall be consistent with the historical and traditional use by the electric utility of the delivery system but shall not exceed thirty (30) feet in any direction from the location of the existing line or other physical components of the system.”

§ 34-1-159(c)(i): “The electric utility shall have the right to reconstruct, re-phase, maintain and repair the existing system and the right to trim and remove trees and other vegetation that is hazardous or that is reasonably likely to become hazardous to the delivery system”.

Thirty feet in any direction from an overhead line is a corridor up to sixty feet wide. Where that corridor crosses common area, the affirmative vegetation-removal right applies to whatever is planted in it, and the standard is not “hazardous” alone but “reasonably likely to become hazardous.” Mature landscaping, screening plantings and shelterbelts installed under a community’s own design standards sit inside that description.

Abandonment, and notice

§ 34-1-159(e): “An easement created under this section shall be deemed abandoned if the electric utility fails to use the delivery system for greater than three (3) consecutive years without an agreement with the landowner…”

§ 34-1-159(g): “Before an electric utility is granted a nonexclusive easement under this section, the electric utility shall publish a notice prior to the easement’s enactment date in a local newspaper or customer newsletter.”

The notice requirement is publication, not service. There is no obligation to notify a landowner, an association, or a registered agent individually, and no recording requirement in the statute. A Wyoming association will not receive a letter about this.

The limits the act writes into itself

Subsection (f) states that the act shall not be construed to interfere with, impair, modify or alter any rights or duties established by an existing easement, to expand use “in a way that would materially increase the burden of the servient estate,” or to “expand or modify the prescriptive easement laws of this state.”

Condition (b)(v) is the one that decides most cases: where there is a valid written easement covering the line, the statute does not apply and the recorded document governs. So the question for any given line is a documentary one — whether a written easement exists for that segment.

Why this lands on Wyoming subdivisions in particular

Wyoming subdivisions built between the 1950s and the early 2000s frequently sit on ground served by a rural electric cooperative under arrangements never reduced to a recorded instrument. Where such a line crosses ground the association owns — a greenbelt, a trail corridor, a private road right-of-way, a well or lift-station parcel — the statute supplies the easement that the paperwork never did, at a width set by historical use and capped at thirty feet.

It pairs with a 2025 act on the same subject from the other direction. HB0192, chapter 119 of the 2025 session laws, requires public utilities to file wildfire mitigation plans, provides that an approved plan “shall preempt any part of a local land use plan or ordinance that would impede or preclude an electric utility from implementing the wildfire mitigation plan,” and makes a landowner’s denial of or unreasonable delay in granting right-of-way access a defence for the utility in a wildfire damages claim. Read together, the two statutes move access to overhead lines from negotiation toward entitlement.

What the act does not do

It creates no easement for a line installed after January 1, 2006. It does not apply where a written easement exists. It does not authorise new lines, new poles or a widened corridor beyond historical use. And it does not displace a recorded easement’s own terms where one is in place.