SALT LAKE CITY -- The most common public comment about a draft agreement to divvy up Snake Valley water between Utah and Nevada? No agreement is better than the one that's proposed.
The comments were discussed Wednesday in Salt Lake City by the Snake Valley Aquifer Advisory Council, which includes members of local governments.
The deal, which was ordered by Congress in 2004, would split the water from an aquifer that straddles the two states. It also would delay until 2019 a proposal by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to siphon water from beneath the Snake Valley and send it 300 miles to the Las Vegas area.
More than 200 comments were submitted on the draft released in August. Of those, 89 said they'd rather see no agreement at all on the water. Others voiced concern about dust and other air quality problems if Snake Valley dries out.
Several council members -- including Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon and Millard County commissioners -- said they were uncomfortable with the agreement. But those who spent four years negotiating said that while no one's getting everything they want, each state is getting something they can live with.
"None of us are that wild about the agreement but it's probably the best we're going to get," said Mike Styler, director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources.
The agreement establishes terms for evenly dividing more than 100,000 acres feet of Snake Valley water between the Nevada and Utah, how water rights will be handled and what sorts of environmental protections will be enacted. An acre foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre with a foot of water.
Critics of the plan in Utah say the pact would give most of the unallocated water -- portions not currently held under water rights -- to Las Vegas at Utah's expense.
But Styler countered that both states have a right to the Snake Valley water. Without an agreement, one state could sue the other in a lengthy and expensive legal process that could leave both without a flexible agreement.
It also provides protections if the Nevada water authority moves ahead with its $3.5 billion project, Styler said.
The pipeline could supply enough water for almost 270,000 homes and is intended to diversify Las Vegas' water supply. The area currently gets about 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River, according to state regulators.
The 10-year delay is intended to provide time to study the environmental impacts of pumping the water out of the aquifer to Las Vegas before public hearings on the pipeline can begin. The hearings are currently scheduled for 2011.
Some in Utah worry that if the project goes through, the project could dramatically draw down the aquifer, leaving less water for farmers and increasing the odds of dusty storms blowing onto the Wasatch Front.
The water authority in Nevada would install an air monitor in Utah if the deal goes through, according to the agreement. Corroon said one monitor won't be enough, and others who commented voiced similar concerns.
Others who commented on the draft worried there wasn't enough scientific data on the future water supplies in the Snake Valley, not enough planned monitoring for plants and animals in the region and that Utah would get shortchanged in the long run.
"Neither state has received what we wanted going into these negotiations," said Allen Biaggi, director of the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, who added that Nevada officials can live with the draft agreement.
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