This is just one post in the Southwest Water Issues Category

Las Vegas-Snake Valley pipeline: Las Vegas may actually be after twice as much water than what they have been saying

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 31, 2007 at 6:37 am

From the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, a story on the proposed pipeline from the Snake Valley to Las Vegas:

Nevada water chief Pat Mulroy and newspaper stories are saying that Las Vegas is looking for 25,000 acre-feet from the Snake Valley. But, the pipeline capacity is for double that, and the amount that Las Vegas is looking for could actually be 50,679 acre-feet. From the article:

… in a “Draft Conceptual Plan of Development” that was prepared by the water authority for the Bureau of Land Management and issued in July, the amount sought is listed as 50,679 acre-feet per year from Snake Valley. Scott Huntley, spokesman for the authority, said Thursday that an environmental analysis being prepared “is taking into account the full amount of our water application estimates.”

About 20 years ago, the authority filed water-right applications seeking 50,679 acre-feet per year from Snake Valley. This remains the amount the water authority wants, Huntley said. However, he said, a few years ago, when the authority began working with the BLM regarding water rights and rights-of-way applications, the agency asked the authority for a reasonable estimate of what it thought would be conveyed from Snake Valley. “At that time, we told BLM, giving them a reasonable estimate, that we thought about 25,000 acre-feet,” Huntley said. That was “just kind of an educated guess” of the amount of water that actually would be piped out of the valley.

But when the BLM began writing an environmental impact statement, the agency asked the water authority to work on the environmental impact statement “on the basis of the full amount of water that could possibly be convened in the pipeline,” which is 50,679 acre-feet, Huntley said. The amount granted would depend on decisions by the Nevada state engineer and negotiations between the two states.

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.