This is a simple law of nature that the Southern Nevada Water Authority wants Utahns to ignore when thirsty Nevada is doing the taking.

SNWA officials want us to believe that if they pump 80,000 acre-feet of water per year from an aquifer on the Nevada/Utah line and pipe it 285 miles to Las Vegas, only the Snake Valley area, home to 600 people, would be affected, and only a little bit.

That belief is either naive or grossly self-serving. In either case, Utah officials, including Gov. Jon Huntsman, have a responsibility to see it for the water grab it is and stop it before it starts.

To keep Utah from throwing sand on the project, Southern Nevada water officials successfully lobbied their state engineer to deny the "interested party" status requested by Salt Lake and Utah counties, three Native American bands, the Central Nevada Water Authority, conservation groups, businesses and residents of the valleys. This decision to exclude legitimate stakeholders is troubling.

SNWA argued that these groups should have protested in 1989 when it first applied for the project. But much has changed in 19 years, including knowledge about hydrology and drought. We now know the dangers of what then seemed to be a fairly innocuous idea that may never be implemented anyway.

Utah water officials now know that the soil-binding root systems of plants in the Snake Valley would die if the pumping lowered the aquifer's water level 50 to 100 feet, a likely scenario if the SNWA plan is approved. The area, most of it in Utah, could easily become a dust bowl, and the prevailing winds would carry that dust to the Wasatch Front, contributing to already high levels of PM10, fine-particulate matter that threatens the health of Utahns.

SNWA admits, when it comes to Utah's plan to pipe water from Lake Powell to fast-growing St. George and Cedar City, that removing water from the Colorado River can have a devastating impact - on southern Nevada. But that agency doesn't see a parallel danger in pumping water from Utah's Snake Valley to burgeoning Las Vegas.

We believe SNWA is right about the potential for disaster from taking water to sustain growth. It's up to the governor, Utah legislators and water officials to explain how that point also applies to SNWA's ill-concieved pipeline plan.