Comments about ‘Snake Valley water split angers Utahns’

"Ignoring geographic, scientific and historical use." Geographic and historical, yes. Scientific, no.
The huge aquifer is mostly in Nevada, not Utah. That's why Utah farmers didn't get what they wanted.

They've been using an aquifer that is mostly under someone else's land.

in Nevada", the snake valley is primarily in Utah. The claim Nevada is making is that the water comes from snow that falls on mountains in Nevada. If they get to claim the water because it originally falls in Nevada (how long does it take to actually enter the aquifier?) then Utah and Colorado should be able to claim most of the water in the Colorado river. Very little of the water in the Colorado river falls in Nevada or California. If Nevada's arguement is valid, Nevada and California have little claim to the Colorado river water.

Flat out wrong American Citizen. The aquifer is vastly, vastly more situated in Utah, extending all the way to the Great Salt Lake.

Take that American Citizen... Bonehead.

If the two states don't divide the water a court will eventually do it for them. The court will look at where the precipitation falls, where uses now exist, what the value of the future uses is (houses and businesses in nevada versus agriculture in utah), and many other things. The court won't look just at the water that's left, but all the water in the source. Looking at it fairly, seems like the 50/50 split is pretty fair, especially since utah gets most of the available water overall.

Rather than waiting ten years for studies to be conducted before deciding whether or not there is enough water in the aquifer to support the pipeline to Las Vegas, why not wait until these studies have been done to determine a proper allocation between the states?

The negotiators appear to have divvied up water they're not sure even exists yet, which would remove the remaining barrier to Las Vegas using the water from the aquifer. That seems disingenuous. There is no rush here--do what needs to be done to get an accurate measure of the water, THEN decide how to divide it. Common sense.

This will be a true test for Utah's representatives in Congress and in the state Legislature. Utah's voters really need to pay attention to how this deal goes down. Unfortunately, the people who run Utah don't seem to be able to compromise with anyone who is not within their little club and they're not too friendly toward science. I'm not optimistic.

Maybe Las Vegas should stop growing, stop using so much water and live within their means... I dont want to give them my water, have my aquifer dry up and then breathe the dust from the dried land that will make me sick and possibly die.