Water-project viability questioned

LAS VEGAS — A state water engineer's decision cutting the amount of water Las Vegas would be able to draw from rural Nevada raised concerns from a regional analyst about the financial viability of a massive pipeline that would be built for the project.

Meantime, Utah water officials told legislators Thursday that negotiations with Nevada over the water project, which crosses state lines, are going slowly. Division of Natural Resources director Mike Styler told a legislative interim committee the state could use up to $1 million to fund studies and negotiations. At issue is whether Utah ranch lands would see streams and wells dry up if underground water from the area along the Nevada border is piped to Las Vegas.

Nevada state engineer Tracy Taylor's decision on Monday allows the Southern Nevada Water Authority to pump 40,000 acre-feet of water per year for 10 years from Spring Valley, in White Pine County near the Utah border. The authority had sought 91,000 acre-feet per year.

"At some point, there's a threshold where you're not moving enough water to offset the capital cost," said Jeremy Aguero, a principal with the economic consulting firm Applied Analysis in Las Vegas.

The Spring Valley plan is a main element of a $2 billion plan to build a 250-mile pipeline to draw rural groundwater mainly from the Spring and Snake valleys and send it to Clark County — home to almost 1.9 million of the state's 2.6 million residents and the economic engine of the state's gambling and tourism economy.

Water authority spokesman Scott Huntley said Monday that the pipeline project would move forward. He called Taylor's ruling "conservative but very reasonable" and said no appeal was planned.

But a critic of the pumping request, Susan Land of the Great Basin Water Network, said she thought the decision threatened the cost-effectiveness of the water authority's pipeline project.

Aguero told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for a Tuesday report that he did not know how many acre-feet of water the pipeline would need to carry for the project to make fiscal sense.

Aguero was appearing Tuesday before the state Legislature in Carson City and did not immediately respond to a request by The Associated Press for comment.

But "if (the water allotment) doesn't meet critical mass to develop the in-state water project, it's absolutely bad for southern Nevada and, frankly, for Nevada," Aguero told the Review-Journal.