The chorus is growing, pleading with Gov. Gary Herbert to deep-six the proposed deal to divide the groundwater beneath Snake Valley between Nevada and Utah. It reportedly now includes some members of the Snake Valley Aquifer Advisory Council, a group created by state law to examine the issues. The governor should heed this call.

Like others, the advisory council has noticed the ruling by a Nevada district judge last month that chastised the state engineer for his allocation of water rights in another basin in the Silver State to the Southern Nevada Water Authority. SNWA wants to pump groundwater from beneath multiple valleys north of Las Vegas and pipe it to Sin City. Snake Valley, which straddles the Utah/Nevada state line, is only one of those valleys.

The judge ruled that the Nevada state engineer, who allocates water rights, had provided no evidence to back up his award of 18,755 acre-feet of water to SNWA from Nevada's Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys. Without that evidence, the engineer's decision was arbitrary, according to the judge, and resulted in oppressive consequences for the affected basins. He ordered the state engineer's decision vacated. SNWA is appealing to the Nevada Supreme Court.

In the meantime, the ruling has given critics of the proposed Snake Valley deal hope that courts might take a similar view of SNWA's request to take 50,000 acre-feet of water annually from that aquifer. The proposed deal between the two states would initially award SNWA 36,000 acre-feet. That is more than the 35,000 acre-feet currently allocated to Utah.

The deal preserves another 20,000 acre-feet for the Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, but Millard County rightly contends it is unfair to include this in Utah's allocation. The refuge isn't even located in Snake Valley.

The real bottom line in this whole fiasco is that precious little water can be removed from the Snake Valley aquifer without damaging both the holders of existing water rights in Utah and the plants and wildlife in the ecosystem. In any case, there needs to be more scientific investigation to determine available water.

The backers of the interstate pact claim that it would protect existing Utah water rights and provide certainty, whereas relying on litigation would be a crap shoot. But we believe with other critics of the deal that it would be folly for Utah to sign away water in Snake Valley when a Nevada court already has sunk the allocation sought by SNWA in a nearby basin. Utah should hold its cards and see how this plays out.