Water, in the midst of a desert that is in the midst of a region experiencing unprecedented population growth, is a valuable thing.
But farmers and ranchers in western Utah's Snake Valley say it's much more than that. They say it's a matter of survival, and that their survival is being challenged by Nevadans who want to funnel the water they have to Las Vegas.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority counters, however, that it has no intention of descending with hood and scythe on ranches in western Utah and eastern Nevada, the rural lifestyle or the environment. Rather, it says, it is just trying to plan for growth.
"We are growing at a rate of about 7,000 to 8,000 people per month, and we'll cross the 3 million population mark shortly," said Pat Mulroy, general manager of the water authority. "So we're growing . . . rather rapidly."
To accommodate that kind of growth, the water authority — in addition to implementing "an extremely aggressive water conservation program" — must look at developing new sources, Mulroy said. Its 2005 Water Resource Plan includes management of Nevada's apportionment of the Colorado River flow and utilization of the Virgin and Muddy rivers.
And it targets potential sources of groundwater that could be transferred via a network of pumps, wells and pipes to the Las Vegas area, where much of the state's growth is concentrated. One of those sources is Snake Valley, which straddles the Utah/Nevada border.
All told, the water authority hopes its 2005 water development plan — which it wants to bear fruit in 2015 — will double the amount of water flowing to Las Vegas.
Snake Valley
Much of the groundwater project targets Lincoln and White Pine counties in Nevada, but a portion includes Utah — a 100-mile, narrow strip of Snake Valley along the western border. Not many people live there — they all live on about 40 ranches, by one resident's count — and those who call Snake Valley home say it's just now being "discovered" by outsiders as a scenic destination.
So, they are few. But increasingly over the course of the year, they are vocal.
On Monday, a group called the Snake Valley Citizens Alliance will stage a "Water Express Run" across Utah's West Desert, culminating with a demonstration at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Federal Building in Salt Lake City. The run, which will travel through Garrison, Gandy, Partoun, Trout Creek and Callao in Millard and Juab counties before turning east to Fairfield and Salt Lake City, is in protest of the plan, which they say is bad news. Bad for current residents. Bad for the economy of the region. Potentially devastating to the environment.
Dean Baker, who leads his family's Baker Ranch in Baker, Nevada, has developed 30-odd springs in Snake Valley, which support 2,000 head of cattle and rotating crops of alfalfa and hay.
"There is no way that you can develop the kind of water they're talking about, not just irrigate where there's recharge, but pump it out of the basin," Baker told the Deseret Morning News editorial board this week. "There's nothing to lead me to believe that's the case."
Baker said that the water authority's plan, which is going through the environmental impact statement process at the Bureau of Land Management, isn't feasible, will put ranchers out of business and will lead to environmental damage.
Not only would water tables drop and aquifers dry up, but indigenous plants also would die off, which will affect wildlife and human life, said Cecil Garland, a rancher in Callao in the lower end of Snake Valley. And, he said, existing springs, wells and aquifers will give way to the creeping forces of Ice Age water from the Salt Desert — alkaline, toxic and unusable — flowing underground, which are currently kept at bay by the pressures provided by the sweet water.
Different data
Or perhaps not. Mulroy points to data showing that the Snake Valley has a "safe yield" of 100,000 acre-feet of water per year. Of that, she said, about 20,000 acre-feet are in use. The water authority's proposal seeks an additional 25,000 acre-feet.
"So, even with our 25,000 additional acre-feet, that barely comes close to half of the perennial use," Mulroy said.
Jerald Anderson, a rancher from EskDale, disagrees.
"This is a desert, and if excess water is available, we'd sure like to know where it's going," he said. "Because of the drought, our water levels have dropped consistently over the last several years, and we have yet to observe any recharge from this wet year. Water travels slowly underground."
The eight-year drought has dried up streams and baked wetlands to clay, Garland said. The greasewood, a small deciduous tree that lives on the desert, is showing signs of distress. And the effects under the SNWA plan would only make matters worse.
"If you take the greasewood off, and the wind blows — as it does for two or three weeks at a time, 35 to 40 miles per hour — you'll see dust in the air, dust as fine as face powder, in the air 3,000 or 4,000 feet," Garland said. "This would affect Fish Springs Wildlife Refuge. This would affect the Utah Test and Training Range. This would affect the wilderness area that is proposed in the Deep Creek Mountains."
Next steps
"It's obvious that southern Nevada is in a critical need to develop water if they're going to continue to grow. I don't deny that," Baker said. "It's important to the state of Nevada to keep Las Vegas healthy and growing.
"But to spend their time and the billions of dollars trying to develop a system that to me is logically wrong, scientifically wrong and morally wrong doesn't make any sense."
The citizens group, in addition to staging events like the one next week, has taken its cause before elected officials at the local and state levels and pledges to continue.
Mulroy urged calm, saying that what information is out there is preliminary, that the BLM is doing its work, and that the debate raging in Nevada and, increasingly, in Utah, is counterproductively emotional.
"I understand the emotional outpouring that this march on Salt Lake City represents," she said. "But it's just that — an emotional outpouring. There are studies and analyses that have to be conducted. Once there is a sense of what water is available, and how safe it is to take out, then — based on the facts — the state engineer will make a determination. And he's been very conservative."
The process still has years to go. An agreement with Lincoln County, in which the county and water authority would share pipeline capacity, is in the works. If completed, that agreement would require a new environmental impact study. And that means at least three years to completion.
In the meantime, Mulroy said the authority is willing to sit down with residents of White Pine County, which includes part of Snake Valley, to assure them of the authority's willingness to involve citizens in the process.
"We have said we'd like to sit down with White Pine County and enter into an agreement, wherein we agree that there will be a review of water rights in 75 years. That's a big deal in the West," Mulroy said. "To see if environmentally, another 50 to 75 years can be sustained. And if White Pine County needed those resources, we'd turn the water back over to the county."
The water authority also has offered a year-to-year evaluation, looking at more immediate impacts of water development in the area. And if circumstances warranted — in the event of a drought, for example — Mulroy said the water authority would stop pumping to let the area recover.
There are mitigation strategies to limit the effect of pumping on existing water users, according to the authority, along with multiple safeguards against environmental damage and plans for economic compensation if residents suffer losses. But much of this discussion gets squelched under the weight of emotion, Mulroy said, leaving the county's key players wary to engage.
'Reckless drive'
Ranchers also are wary — of the water authority, its science and the process.
Baker said there is "almost a reckless drive to get this thing done," that the aquifer systems are poorly understood and the SNWA's proposals are vague and rely on "voodoo science."
Anderson, the rancher from Garrison, told the Morning News in a letter that "the answer to these concerns from SNWA typically falls into two categories: 'Trust me' and 'We would never do that.' Neither approach is acceptable when livelihood, heritage and environment are at stake. Much more must be understood before we expose our future to this project."
Even if it worked, Ken Hill, a member of the citizens alliance from Partoun, said the project is "only a temporary fix to Las Vegas' explosive, some say cancerous, growth that Nevada officials have no desire to quench.
"Ultimately, they are going to have to have additional water even if this project is approved. We think they should be looking to that ultimate solution."
And so the conflict builds.
The bottom line, according to Mulroy: "I think it's important for everyone to realize that we're very early in the process. That a lot of the data that needs to be developed is still in the process of being developed, and that this (citizens group's) reaction is based on assumptions and fear. We are absolutely committed that we will manage the water rights that we are granted in such a way that will not detrimentally affect existing ranchers, the rural lifestyle or the environment."
From Kathy Hill, wife of Ken Hill:
"I don't want to be on the other end of their experiment. The impact is to my home, and I don't want my home valued by Las Vegas values. If they drained off the valley and turned it into a dust bowl, choked away all the springs that the animals use, that's changing my home to the point where I don't know what will be left for us. They say they'll mitigate, that we can just dig our wells a little deeper. But you can't mitigate a spring that doesn't exist anymore."
E-mail: jnii@desnews.com