Standing in the way of the Southern Nevada Water Authority's groundwater pumping and pipeline project, general manager Pat Mulroy warned, could set a bad precedent - not only for Utah and its future dealings with surrounding states, but also for cooperative water ventures throughout the West.

"Utah is in a precarious position," Mulroy said during a meeting with The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board. "When one state tries to stop [internal] development of another state's water supply, things can get dicey."

Mulroy acknowledged that SNWA has sought an accelerated timetable from Utah for reaching a water-sharing agreement on Snake Valley groundwater - ostensibly so the water authority can have at least the framework of a deal in place before Nevada's state engineer convenes a series of public hearings on the $1 billion project in the affected areas.

Utah has acceded to the request - or caved in to pressure, according to critics - and is now doing groundwater analysis in the Snake Valley to meet a September deadline.

But Mulroy said she is also troubled by local opposition to the SNWA plan - which calls for the Clark County water agency to tap groundwater wells in four rural Nevada basins and ship it to Las Vegas via a 200-mile pipeline - and language in a congressional bill that she believes has created the problem.

At the behest of state officials, Utah Sen. Bob Bennett inserted a rider into Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's 2004 Lincoln County land use bill that states that Utah and Nevada must come to an agreement over shared groundwater resources in the Snake Valley before the water authority's project can commence.

Mulroy says that is tantamount to a veto, something she never envisioned, and something she says SNWA opponents have been using as a club to scuttle the project.

"Let's turn it around," Mulroy said. "Would Utah stand still to allow Nevada to veto a water project being developed in Utah?

"That [bill] language is about as unfortunate a thing as I have seen. It's given people a notion that Utah does, in fact, have a veto. The sooner we have an agreement, the better off we'll all be."

Mike Styler, director of Utah's Department of Natural Resources, disputes Mulroy's interpretation. Utah has never considered the bill language, authored by the state engineer, as a veto, he said. Rather, it was inserted to assure Utah's interests in the Snake Valley Basin were protected. Utah claims roughly 40 percent of the groundwater that sits in the giant aquifer under the state line.

"We have never wanted to stop the project," Styler said. "She looks at this as a veto, and I do not. All we intended it to be was leverage for Utah to be able to protect our water rights. And it's working very well because we're at the table."

Still, the accelerated timeline to make a deal with Nevada has riled the opposition. Environmental groups and ranchers on both sides of the border fear politics is trumping science. Completion of a detailed U.S. Geological Survey study of groundwater resources in the region is still two years away.

"The supposed draft agreement is a premature, unacceptable document, not in the best interests of Utah, and shows how little our water resources and lives of the west desert's citizens matter," Don Duff, president of the Utah Council of Trout Unlimited, and a retired aquatic ecologist, said in a letter to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. earlier this week.

Mulroy says the USGS study, while exhaustive, will not settle the ultimate question of just how much groundwater actually sits below the Snake Valley, or how taking 25,000 acre-feet a year out of it will impact the resource. The only way to determine that, she argued, is to commence withdrawals and adjust as the impacts present themselves.

"You can drill all the wells you want, and it's still guesswork," she said. "It comes down to how you manage it."

Mulroy says she is confident that Utah and Nevada will strike a deal that will work for all parties. But she again cautioned against dragging it out, given the precedence such an action would create.

"The longer this stands out there as a veto, the more uncomfortable it will become for Utah," she said. "If they can do it to another state, they can have it done to them, too."

jbaird@sltrib.com