Utah's top physicians' group warns that a proposed agreement to divide Snake Valley water with Nevada could expose the public to carcinogens, radiation and valley fever and jeopardize Utahns' very lives.

In a letter sent this week to Gov. Gary Herbert, Senate President Mike Waddoups and the Utah Department of Natural Resources, the Utah Medical Association rips the proposal for its flimsy science, lack of data on potential air-quality damage and a failure to consider long-term health risks for downwinders.

"Should this agreement move forward in its current form, the residents, farmers and ranchers in West Desert farming communities and on the Goshute Reservation would see their health and livelihoods put at risk," says the letter, signed by Michelle McOmber, the UMA's executive vice president and CEO. "Indeed, adverse health and quality of life impacts may be spread throughout the state."

UMA, the state's largest physicians group with more than 3,500 members, has joined the 200-member Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment in opposing the proposed deal, made public as a draft in mid-August after four years of secret negotiations.

Cris Cowley, past president of the UMA, said Wednesday the organization's board decided to take a stand after its environment committee looked into the science of dust pollution and analyzed the water-sharing draft agreement.

The committee, Cowley said, "felt strongly we should make a statement so

the public had the opportunity to understand there was more at stake than just the water."

Last week's violent dust storm in Sydney, Australia, carried with it pathogens that have public-health authorities fretting, Cowley said. And Utah already has a particulate pollution problem that the Division of Air Quality regularly tracks.

"We're worried," he said, "more of those days will occur if the vegetation dies in the West Desert."

Utah Department of Natural Resources Executive Director Mike Styler says it's better to sign an upfront agreement than wait until the Nevada state engineer rules on the Las Vegas water utility's request for an allocation of 50,000 acre-feet from Snake Valley. The Southern Nevada Water Authority wants to build a 300-mile pipeline that would siphon water from the valley to support Las Vegas.

Herbert, too, desires an agreement, but not necessarily the draft as currently worded. Spokeswoman Angie Welling said the governor still wants input on the proposal. "Certainly, the opinion of the Utah Medical Association is important," she said.

The proposed deal includes monitoring agreements and a promise that appropriate action would be taken if the water drawdown proved harmful.

That monitoring, the UMA charged, is "remarkably nonspecific and subject to significant manipulation," especially since the Southern Nevada Water Authority largely would be in charge of paying for any remedy.

Ranchers say Snake Valley soils would blow away if the water table were to drop more than 100 feet, which scientists with the Utah Geological Survey have said would be likely with the pumping. Prevailing westerly winds would blow the dust straight at the Wasatch Front.

Utah already is plagued with particulate soot pollution. But the UMA letter points out that dust storms out of Nevada would carry millions of tons of toxic substances, including mercury, an asbestoslike substance called erionite, radioactive particles left from 900 nuclear tests conducted in Nevada and fungus spores that cause valley fever, a potentially lethal infection spreading across the desert Southwest.

"There are unique threats in the soil in the west desert that will have potentially profound impacts on public health beyond particulate matter," the organization says in its letter. "These are some of the most toxic substances known and yet this agreement does nothing to assess or mitigate these health risks."

The letter, sent as an official comment on the proposal, also points out that even if pumping were stopped after the plants died, damage to the aquifer and the surrounding geographical basins would be permanent.