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July 5th, 2008
Courtesy of The Salt Lake City Tribune, a detailed look at the increasing tension between Utah and Nevada – the two driest states in America - over ever-shrinking water resources. As the article notes:
“…On moonless nights here in the Utah-Nevada borderlands of Snake Valley, the naked eye can see five planets, countless stars and the great swath of the Milky Way.  Climb the hill to Great Basin National Park and one can see the nighttime glow of Las Vegas, whose leaders say their sprawling city must have the water under Snake Valley – or wither and die. And they are coming for it, making plans for a 285-mile pipeline to tap the aquifer that stretches from Salt Lake City to Death Valley and take the water south.
At the same time, Utah wants to build a pipeline on Lake Powell to suck up Colorado River water and send it northward to growing desert communities before it gets anywhere near Glitter Gulch.
For now, the two driest states in the nation are in a quiet standoff, fitfully negotiating or scuffing lines in the sand.
Eventually, though, the outcome of this tale of two pipelines, begun with an agreement struck 86 years ago to share the Colorado and now groaning under rapid population growth and climate distress, could shake the foundations of Western water law.
…At least the transaction took place within the boundaries of the community the town of Baker anchors, Baker and Perea say. It’s something people here and neighbors, Utahns and Nevadans have accepted together.
But when Las Vegas tries the same logic to justify buying up water rights in this remote rural area to feed its nonstop urban growth, Baker and Perea object.
“They’re taking the potential for growth in this valley down to Las Vegas,” Baker says.
…The proposed Southern Nevada Water Authority pipeline could carry away 80,000 acre-feet of groundwater each year and would imperil every one of the valley’s 600 or so residents, they say.
…A month earlier, during an interview in her office, Southern Nevada Water Authority manager Patricia Mulroy made similar arguments against the 158-mile pipeline Utah wants to build from Lake Powell to feed growth in Washington, Iron and Kane counties.
…Mulroy quickly ran through the talking points she has uttered repeatedly over the years to multiple news outlets in fierce defense of her arid city’s future. She ticked off the historic Colorado River water-shortage-sharing agreement the seven Colorado Basin states signed last year, the effects of climate change on the river flows, the “world of hurt” Los Angeles and San Diego are in due to abysmal runoff from the Sierra Nevada, Las Vegas’ dedication to better water conservation and the fact that more people work in a single Vegas casino than live in all of Snake Valley.
She brushed off Utah’s concern about Snake Valley’s fate should the Nevada pipeline go forward. The project won’t hurt the ranchers, she said.
So, given that the Colorado River is overallocated – that is, there is far more water promised on paper than the river actually produces – given the needs of populous downstream states, given Las Vegas’ imperative to grow, given that the Powell pipeline is planned for people who have yet to arrive in southern Utah, Mulroy said it would be “unreasonable” to develop the Lake Powell pipeline.
Up until now, Mulroy said, Utah has had the luxury of time, the ability to look only to its own needs. That has changed. “They have to become part of a larger system,” she said.
‘There’s not enough water to say, ‘This is mine, this is yours,’ ” Mulroy said. “Neither Utah nor Nevada has time to go to court.”