Can such a fragile environment survive a proposal by southern Nevada water officials to pump 25,000 acre-feet of water annually from groundwater wells near Baker, Nev., to Las Vegas via 500 miles of pipeline?
Not to hear rancher Cecil Garland tell it. Take a closer look around, the 79-year-old says, and it doesn't take long to spot the withered vegetation and dried-up springs that dot the land - proof positive to Garland and others that the drought that has gripped the Great Basin for most of the decade has yet to release its hold. Even after the best water year in two decades.
"I could show you more, much more just like it," he says as he strides across a hard patch of dirt that used to be a swampy bog. "But I think you get my drift."
Garland's argument is being made with increasing volume by the ranchers and residents of the Snake Valley on both sides of the Utah-Nevada border.
There is little question that the gambling mecca needs water. Metropolitan Clark County's population has more than doubled since 1990 and today is home to more than 1.6 million people. Busloads more arrive every day, and the boom of new casinos, hotels and golf courses shows no sign of abating anytime soon.
But denizens of the Snake Valley maintain that if the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plan takes hold, the vast series of aquifers that extend from roughly the Tooele County line in the north to Great Basin National Park in the south will be depleted to the point that both the land and their occupations will blow away in the wind.
"All of my 50 years working this land leads me to believe that there's just not that much water there," says Dean Baker, a Nevada rancher whose large spread straddles the state line. "You cannot take that much water without drying up the valley. It'll be no good for Las Vegas, and it will be a disaster for us."
The pace of the battle between the Snake Valley locals and the water authority has picked up this summer, and Utah has become the hot zone. Because of the shared groundwater sources along the state line, the Beehive State must grant its approval before the pipeline project can commence in Nevada.
So both factions have met with Utah officials, and in recent weeks they have each pitched their case to the editorial boards of Salt Lake City's two daily newspapers. The water authority, with its much deeper pockets, also has hired a pair of high-octane lobbyists - Washington, D.C.-based Marcus Faust and the Utah County tandem of Fred and Chris Finlinson - to sell their proposal at the Utah Statehouse.
"They're used to getting what they want," Baker says.
But the ranchers are a scrappy bunch, and no strangers to taking on bigger foes. Garland was a leader in the successful fight to halt the arrival of the MX missile in the west desert in the late 1970s. And the cattlemen have formed an alliance with county officials on both sides of the border and also teamed with environmental groups such as Trout Unlimited, the Sierra Club and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance to bring some heft to the arena.
Southern Nevada Water Authority officials call opposition to their proposed project premature at best - and hysterical at worst.
"We absolutely understand that this is an emotional issue," says Southern Nevada spokesman C.J. Davis. "But before we are granted permission to do anything, the [Nevada] state engineer has to be comfortable that we are doing this without adversely impacting other users.
"People are jumping to the conclusion that this is going to have an incredibly detrimental impact. But based upon the feedback I'm hearing, this is less about the water that is being pumped and more about where it is going. They just don't want it go to [Las Vegas] residents. But they have just as much right to the groundwater as anybody else in the state."
The water authority has commenced work on the pipeline project based upon U.S. Geological Survey inventories, conducted a decade ago, which indicate that the "safe yield" of groundwater underneath the Snake Valley and neighboring Spring Valley is as much as 100,000 acre-feet of water per year. Of that amount, only 20,000 acre-feet is actually being used by ranchers and residents, which means there should more than enough water for everybody.
"All we have done is ask permission to use unused water in these basins," says Davis.
But the ranchers, who would probably oppose the pipeline project in any case, say that the six-year drought has changed everything. Utah officials tend to concur - at the moment, anyway.
A Utah Geological Survey report released earlier this year concluded that the amount of water that Southern Nevada water officials propose to take "will likely adversely affect" groundwater conditions in western Utah by decreasing the discharge of "agriculturally and ecologically important springs."
Likewise, the director of Utah's Department of Natural Resources, acknowledges he is "skeptical" of Nevada's claims. But Delta native Michael Styler says the state will undertake due diligence - it has submitted a proposal to drill 13 test wells to the Bureau of Land Management - before making a final decision.
"Let us come up with some empirical data," Styler says. "If the science says there's as much water there as the Southern Nevada Water Authority believes there is, we won't argue with it. But if there's not, and the ranchers are right, we've got to defend Utah's water rights."
Certainly, concern about the proposed pipeline extends beyond the ranching community. Environmental groups are alarmed at what a depleted water table could mean for places such as Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, or the rich deer, elk and fish habitat of the Deep Creeks.
"The question is what this will do when the groundwater is already low," says Don Duff, president of Trout Unlimited's Utah Council. "In the last 25 years, even the ranchers' limited pumping has drawn down the water table, and the drought has further reduced it. You can imagine what such a large project like this will do, not only to the ranchers, but the native fish and game, and nongame species."
And yes, the ranchers do acknowledge that at least some of their resentment is about sharing water with Las Vegas, which has been and continues to be the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States. But they also argue that it is a perfectly legitimate beef.
"Is it Las Vegas' prerogative to just keep growing and growing? To add 8,000 people a month? To just keep throwing up houses and casinos with no thought about how it impacts others?" says Garland, a onetime craps dealer in Sin City. "When on Earth does does it stop?"
jbaird@sltrib.com
Run for water
Dozens of residents of the Snake Valley will run and caravan 223 miles across Utah's west desert to protest the Southern Nevada Water Authority's proposal to pump area water to Las Vegas via a pipeline.
The run begins before dawn on Monday in Garrison, Utah and Baker, Nevada, with participants running north through Gandy, Partoun, Trout Creek and Callao, then following the Pony Express trail east to Fairfield before heading north to arrive at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building in Salt Lake City on Wednesday at 10 a.m.
There, run participants will deliver letters to county commissioners, state legislators, Utah's congressional delegation and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. urging them to oppose the pipeline proposal.
