The history of the Aral Sea in central Asia and the Owens Valley in California offers a powerful lesson about the likely consequence if Utah allows Nevada to steal water from the Snake Valley that straddles the border between the two states.
In 1960, the Aral Sea was the world's fourth largest lake. The diversion of fresh water to support cotton farming in the surrounding desert cut river flow into the Aral Sea to a trickle. By 2007, it had shrunk to 10 percent of its historical size.
The once-thriving fishery of the Aral Sea disappeared, and the major port city is now more than 60 miles from water. The blowing dust off the now-dry lake bed has smothered local agricultural production and ushered in a health crisis among the residents.
Life expectancy of the local population has dropped by nearly five years, the result of increased respiratory illnesses, throat and esophageal cancers, and liver and kidney aliments all caused by inhaling blowing dust and salts from the dry lake bed.
This unimaginable human tragedy was human-caused in four decades by unwise use of very limited water resources.
At the turn of the last century, the Owens Valley in California was a thriving agricultural basin with the beautiful Owens Lake as its centerpiece. Growth in Los Angeles soon outstripped the local water supply and an aqueduct was constructed, diverting water from the Owens River to Los Angeles 223 miles away.
Through subterfuge, persistence and bribery, Los Angeles secured most of the water rights in the Owens Valley and diverted an increasingly large amount of water from the Owens River to Los Angeles. In 1970, a second aqueduct began draining the aquifers in the Owens Valley, sending more water to Los Angeles.
As water levels fell in the aquifers, springs and seeps dried up and disappeared, and vegetation dependent on groundwater died. The Owens Valley is now a dead alkali flat that has become the largest source of particulate air pollution in the United States.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority is seeking to remove 16 billion gallons of water each year from the aquifers under Snake Valley and other central Nevada valleys and pump it to Las Vegas to support the relentless growth of "Sin City."
This plan is eerily similar to the Los Angeles water grab from Owens Valley. The Snake Valley aquifers were filled over millennia, but through shortsightedness, they can be emptied within decades.
SNWA hired hydrogeologist Timothy Durbin to quantify the impact of the proposal on local water tables. His findings never saw the light of day during the Nevada hearings held in September 2006. Durbin no longer works for the SNWA and is now trying to make his findings public.
His scientific modeling predicts a fall of up to 200 feet in the water table under Snake Valley, resulting in the loss of local ponds, seeps, streams and vegetation. This scheme could well turn the Snake Valley into another Owens Valley, and the mistake may be irreversible.
Utahns would be downwind of the blowing dust from the Snake Valley. We likely would suffer the health consequences of inhaling this dust, with increased respiratory, kidney and liver aliments, and increases in cancer.
Snake Valley residents would pay for Las Vegas' water grab with their livelihood, and Utah residents would pay with their health.
It is not too late for Utahns to influence the outcome. Let Gov. Jon Huntsman know that you would support him in vetoing this proposal. He has that power.
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* CRIS COWLEY is a physician, a member of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, president-elect of the Utah Medical Association, past president of the LDS Hospital Medical Staff and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
