There is no reason to hurry to sign a Snake Valley water-sharing agreement with Nevada, Gov. Gary Herbert said Monday, but neither should the two states suspend negotiations while Nevada courts sort out an in-state water conflict.

During a meeting of the Snake Valley Aquifer Advisory Council at the Utah Capitol, six of the seven panel members advised Herbert that, given a Nevada court's October ruling on water pumping from three valleys south of Snake Valley, the governor ought to refrain from signing a draft agreement announced in August.

Herbert agreed. "Clearly, we ought to be in a go-slow mode," he said. "There's no rush here to sign an agreement that I can see."

Last month, Judge Norman Robison of Nevada's 7th Judicial District in Lincoln County struck down state Engineer Tracy Taylor's July 2008 decision to allow the Southern Nevada Water Authority to siphon millions of gallons of water a year from Cave, Delamar and Dry Lake valleys to feed Las Vegas growth.

The authority has said it plans to appeal the ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court. Agency spokesman Scott Huntley said the judge ignored 100 years of Nevada water law and appeared to display bias against Las Vegas during court proceedings.

Attorney Simeon Herskovits, representing the Nevada ranchers who sued Taylor and the state Division of Water Resources, predicted the ruling would stand. That, he said, could doom Las Vegas' plan to build a 300-mile, $3.5 billion pipeline -- with a spur to Snake Valley -- because without the other three valleys, the project could be economically unfeasible.

An appeal could take a year or more to resolve. In the meantime, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, a member of the Utah advisory panel, suggested negotiations be suspended.

But Herbert said he still believes it's in Utah's best interest to have a state-to-state agreement under way, especially after a meeting in Washington with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who Herbert said was certain the appeal would prevail.

There also is a political problem, Herbert said. Reid, who faces a tough re-election effort, could use the so-called "nuclear option" and push Congress to change the law that requires the two states to agree on Snake Valley.

The draft agreement made public in mid-August after four years of secret negotiations proposes to divide in half the water estimated to flow under Snake Valley, which lies mostly in Utah. The Southern Nevada Water Authority has applied for 40,000 acre-feet from the aquifer to be pumped initially along with water from other Nevada valleys to Las Vegas. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, enough to supply up to two households for a year or irrigate an acre of land with a foot of water.

On paper, the accord evenly splits 132,000 acre-feet of water per year -- a U.S. Geological Survey estimate of how much could be safely withdrawn that the agency said was only 67 percent reliable.

Critics say the deal is better for Nevada than Utah, and they worry the environmental protections in the agreement have no teeth. Opponents include Salt Lake, Millard and Utah counties, ranchers and farmers, the Utah Medical Association, the Great Basin Water Network and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation.

Snake Valley ranchers and other residents say the valley already is in delicate equilibrium, with vegetation holding the soil in place. If the water table should fall more than 60 feet -- and experts have predicted it could decline 200 feet -- plants would die and resultant dust storms would blow to the already-polluted Wasatch Front.

Defenders, including Utah Department of Natural Resources Executive Director Mike Styler and panel member John Harja, director of the state Public Lands Policy Coordination Office, say it is better to have the agreement, which would hold off on any new allocations until 2019. Without the accord, the Nevada state engineer would hold a hearing on the Las Vegas application in 2011.