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."

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