RENO, Nev. — The protests are piling up over a plan that proposes to tap water from an aquifer in Snake Valley that straddles the border of Utah and Nevada.
An announcement by the Great Basin Water Network said more than 1,600 protests have been filed as a result of the Southern Nevada Water Authority's application for water rights to 130 wells.
"This outpouring of protests from such a large number and broad range of organizations and individuals shows just how united and strong the opposition to this misguided project has become," said Susan Lynn, coordinator of the network, which led the outreach effort to garner protests.
The water authority wants to build a 285-mile pipeline to convey water to Las Vegas because it fears its current water supplies will dry up in the years to come as more development continues to pose demands on the Colorado River.
Critics of the plan, however, say the aquifer cannot support the project and the water taken will leave the area sapped of its agricultural production and jeopardize native wildlife and vegetation.
Protesters include Millard, Juab, Tooele, Beaver, Salt Lake and Utah counties and the Goshute, Ely Shoshone and Duckwater Shoshone tribes.
The protests were precipitated by the January ruling of the Nevada Supreme Court, which called into question the validity of the original water applications filed by in 1989. The water authority re-filed those applications Jan. 28, resulting in a new protest period which ended April 23.
Utah and Nevada negotiators had inked a draft agreement that proposed to split the water in the Snake Valley aquifer, which is mostly located in Utah but gets the majority of its water from the mountains of Nevada.
That agreement was later put on hold, however, after the Nevada ruling re-set the clock on the water rights applications.
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