This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

It's clear that Utah and Nevada ranchers understand the proper order of horse and cart better than the Southern Nevada Water Authority or the Department of Interior.

Those two agencies have made a surreptitious deal for a massive groundwater pumping project to benefit burgeoning Las Vegas before getting all the facts about its potential negative effects.

The folks whose ranching livelihoods could be threatened by a SNWA plan to drain hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water out of the aquifer under rural valleys in eastern Nevada and western Utah reasonably want water officials to consider hard science before deciding whether to approve the plan.

That makes more sense than allowing the SNWA to pull 225,000 acre feet of water out of the arid valleys near the Great Basin National Park and ship it to Las Vegas through a brand-new 200-mile pipeline before reports show what the impact of the project could be.

The U.S. Geological Survey is collecting data for a groundwater analysis that will be completed next year. The Bureau of Land Management is doing an environmental impact study that is not yet finished. Moving ahead without the results of those studies to allow the pumping and then monitor its effects after the fact seems to us to be dangerously putting the cart way out ahead of the horse.

Working backward in this way would make the pumping project extremely difficult to undo if critics' warnings about ecological damage turn out to be warranted. If that expensive pipeline were installed and water from the aquifer allowed Las Vegas to add more thousands to its population, how could the SNWA admit that it was an unwise move and turn off the tap?

No decision has been made yet, and Utah officials must agree before the SNWA can take water out of Snake Valley, as the aquifer is shared by the two states. But the SNWA wants the plan approved and soon. Its pact with Interior on ways to monitor and mitigate effects of the pumping is a way to expedite premature approval for the questionable plan.

Hearings on the Spring Valley portion of the project are under way. A decision should be made only after all input has been presented and scientific data has been gathered and analyzed. Putting this cart on a fast track would be asking for trouble.