Delay sought in Snake Valley pipeline project

Purveyors of a would-be 300-mile pipeline project that would tap water from the Snake Valley aquifer have asked for a one-year delay to complete a modeling study of the potential impacts of pumping the groundwater.

Officials with the Southern Nevada Water Authority call the need for extra time reasonable because an environmental-impact study by the Bureau of Land Management is not yet done.

Utah-based critics of the pipeline project say the request is outrageous and smacks of the project's demise.

"They are putting a positive spin on their own failure to do due diligence," said Steve Erickson, a spokesman with the Great Basin Water Network.

"They should do the honorable thing and withdraw their application altogether," he said, adding that the water authority is doing nothing more than "blowing smoke."

At issue is the authority's groundwater application to the Nevada State Engineer, an "evidentiary-exchange" hearing on that matter set for June and subsequent public hearings scheduled to begin in late September.

A letter dated Monday to the state engineer asked for the extension.

J.C. Davis, water-authority spokesman, said it has been impossible to complete the computerized hydrology study because the BLM has not yet defined the parameters they must follow.

"We can only develop the model as fast as they define the parameters," he said.

Snake Valley straddles the Utah/Nevada border, and while most of the land is in Utah, Davis said, most of the water in the aquifer originates in Nevada, where the mountains are.

The water authority made right-of-way applications in 2004 in support of plans to construct the 300-mile pipeline to Las Vegas that would be 84 inches in diameter.

An estimated 50,000 acre-feet of water would be drawn from the aquifer each year for use by Las Vegas households.

Project critics say tapping the aquifer to such an extent would have detrimental environmental impacts in the basin area and beyond, sabotaging the viability of native plant life that could no longer reach a depleted water table.

Such erosion of plant life, they say, would lead to barren landscapes that when kicked up by wind would spew fugitive dust storms as far east as Salt Lake and Utah counties.