Dozens of residents, government and education officials from the area - along with neighbors from across the state line in Nevada - arrived at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building following a 220-mile relay run from Baker, Nev., to deliver bundles of letters to congressional and state leaders.

Their plea to Utah and its leaders: Reject a proposal by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to tap wells on the Nevada side of the line and transport the water to Las Vegas via a 500-mile network of pipelines.

"This is one of the last prime areas of the West," Ed Alder, the principal of West Desert High School, said during a morning press conference. "We need to protect it."

Southern Nevada water officials have put forth the plan as a way to quench the thirst of what has become the nation's fastest growing metropolitan area. Las Vegas has essentially maxed out what it can take out of the Colorado River; it now must look elsewhere to meet the demands of the thousands of new residents who arrive there every month.

But residents of the Snake Valley on both sides of the border charge that such a proposal, if implemented, will devastate their livelihoods and the land they live on.

Callao rancher Cecil Garland said groundwater tables in the valley are already low following six years of drought. Southern Nevada's groundwater pumping plan would make what is already a bad situation much worse.

"We have no surplus water in the Snake Valley," Garland said. "The taking of the water means the destruction of the habitat. And the destruction of the habitat is a not-so-subtle form of genocide."

Southern Nevada officials have called the Snake Valley residents' opposition premature. Decade-old studies, they say, show as much as 100,000 acre-feet of water is available annually in the aquifers underneath the valley. Their proposal calls for a yearly withdrawal of just 25,000 acre-feet.

Water authority spokesman C.J. Davis said last week that no water will be tapped from the region unless ongoing studies by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of Land Management confirm those estimates.

But Snake Valley residents, who believe their way of life is on the line, are not taking chances, calling their media campaign the only way to make their voices heard. Students from West Desert High School and residents of local communities took part in the 2 1/2 -day run, which began Monday in Baker, Nev.

"We don't want to see a precedent like this set with west desert water," said Juab County Commissioner Neil Cook. "We need to keep it for the people who eke out a living there. We need to keep it a special place for everybody."

jbaird@sltrib.com