A dispute between the Southern Nevada Water Authority and residents of the desert region Utah and Nevada share became more heated Thursday.
Residents of the region and Salt Lake City environmentalists demanded a new water study, saying a federal report indicating that much water is available may be in error. Nevada's official request for water from the Snake Valley that straddles the two states is 50,679 acre-feet per year.
The activists are concerned that withdrawing water from the Nevada side of the Snake Valley aquifer and piping it toward Las Vegas could deprive the region of water, causing damage to ranching operations and natural areas.
In August 2005, the authority's general manager, Pat Mulroy, told the Deseret Morning News that 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, and the authority wanted 25,000 acre-feet more.
"So, even with our 25,000 additional acre-feet, that barely comes close to half of the perennial use," Mulroy said.
Since then, the issue has been framed by state and water-authority officials in terms of the authority seeking 25,000 acre-feet from the Snake Valley aquifer. But in a "Draft Conceptual Plan of Development" that was prepared by the water authority for the Bureau of Land Management and issued in July, the amount sought is listed as 50,679 acre-feet per year from Snake Valley.
Scott Huntley, spokesman for the authority, said Thursday that an environmental analysis being prepared "is taking into account the full amount of our water application estimates."
About 20 years ago, the authority filed water-right applications seeking 50,679 acre-feet per year from Snake Valley. This remains the amount the water authority wants, Huntley said.
However, he said, a few years ago, when the authority began working with the BLM regarding water rights and rights-of-way applications, the agency asked the authority for a reasonable estimate of what it thought would be conveyed from Snake Valley.
"At that time, we told BLM, giving them a reasonable estimate, that we thought about 25,000 acre-feet," Huntley said. That was "just kind of an educated guess" of the amount of water that actually would be piped out of the valley.
But when the BLM began writing an environmental impact statement, the agency asked the water authority to work on the environmental impact statement "on the basis of the full amount of water that could possibly be convened in the pipeline," which is 50,679 acre-feet, Huntley said. The amount granted would depend on decisions by the Nevada state engineer and negotiations between the two states.
Concerned residents and environmentalists are crying foul about the plan calling for 50,679 acre-feet.
This is "another example of the Southern Nevada Water Authority's propensity to pull the bait-and-switch on the populace," said Steve Erickson, who is with the Citizens Education Project, a Salt Lake-based group.
Earlier in the decisionmaking process, he said, "people commented based upon 25,000 acre-feet per year." Whatever the environmental impacts would be from that now could be doubled with the expanded amount, he added.
Gerald McDonough, also with Citizens Education Project, said the Utah Geological Survey estimated that an annual 25,000 acre-feet withdrawal "might drop the water table in Millard County by 100 feet, and possibly reverse the direction of flows of the West Desert ... and this is twice that."
Erickson and McDonough were among a small group of people who presented a petition with about 500 signatures to members of the Utah congressional delegation Thursday. They assembled in front of the Federal Building in Salt Lake City to read the petition and pass it along to representatives of the delegation.
Huntley responded in a telephone interview from his office in Las Vegas: "The people from the BLM have actually stated very clearly" that none of the determinations about impacts that were based on the earlier figures would change with 50,679 acre-feet.
Asked what those determinations involved, he said, "They were determining things like potential impacts on wildlife, things of that nature, and I'm not exactly sure what they were dealing with" at that time.
Don Duff, an aquatic biologist with the anglers' group Trout Unlimited, said the petition asks for a new study of water resources in the area. The federal report from which the state officials and the water authority have obtained most of their numbers is a U.S. Geological Survey report called Water Resources of the Basin and Range Carbonate-Rock Aquifer System, and it "has quite a few shortcomings," he said.
"We certainly don't want our water going to Nevada just by intimidation or lack of scientific study."
Ed Naranjo, vice chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, based in Ibapah, Tooele County, said the Confederated Tribes group was never consulted by the Department of Interior about the water use, as required by law.
"We're not very happy with the action the Department of Interior has taken" in signing a stipulation concerning water in the area, Naranjo said. "If the water dries up, there would be nowhere else to go."
E-mail: bau@desnews.com