- Water study in Snake Valley is in need of more funding
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By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
The water study commissioned by Millard County and supported by Juab County which is to determine the ground water in the Snake Valley and surrounding areas needs more funding.
Bart Whatcott, Millard County Commissioner, Phillip Gardner and David Susong, engineers, presented the information that had been amassed to date in the study.
"We would like to complete the study but it would cost $71,920 more to accomplish that," said Whatcott. "I am going to the counties involved with the study to see if they will participate in this final study."
The information being gleaned will be presented in the case concerning the desire of the Southern Nevada Water Authority to use the water from the area.
"It will help the state engineer with additional information that has not been available before," said Gardner. "The study shows the relationship of the aquifers in the West Desert."
The study also shows the age of the water and the direction of flow.
Commissioners agreed to continue support for the effort to garner the data needed to keep Utah's water in Utah. Therefore, they voted to help fund the remainder of the study.
"I will let you know what the cost will be after I meet with the other counties," said Whatcott.
Protesters of the plan include multiple counties in Utah, including Salt Lake, Millard and Juab, as well as diverse groups such as Native American Indian tribes, ranchers, farmers and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which operates the Cleveland and Rogers ranches and has associated grazing permits in eastern Nevada.
Susong said that he had been invited to testify before the Secretary of the Interior and had replied that he would be happy to do so. However, he was prevented from testifying by the Secretary.
"We couldn't use our study at that time because it had not been previously submitted," he said.
The study, said Gardner, shows that the underground water runs more to the north and it had been thought, previous to the study, that the water ran to the south.
"Philip (Gardner) is the expert on this subject," said Whatcott.
At the site: http://ut.water.usgs.gov, there is a map which Gardner helped prepare.
"The Regional Potentiometric-Surface Map of the Great Basin Carbonate and Alluvial Aquifer System in Snake Valley and Surrounding Areas, Juab, Millard, and Beaver Counties, Utah, and White Pine and Lincoln Counties, Nevada," by Philip M. Gardner, Melissa D. Masbruch, Russell W. Plume, and Susan G. Buto, is available for viewing.
"Water-level measurements from 190 wells were used to develop a potentiometric-surface map of the east-central portion of the regional Great Basin carbonate and alluvial aquifer system in and around Snake Valley, eastern Nevada and western Utah," said Gardner.
The map area covers approximately 9,000 square miles in Juab, Millard, and Beaver Counties, Utah, and White Pine and Lincoln Counties, Nevada.
Recent (2007-2010) drilling by the Utah Geological Survey and U.S. Geological Survey has provided new data for areas where water-level measurements were previously unavailable. New water-level data were used to refine mapping of the pathways of intrabasin and interbasin groundwater flow.
At 20 of these locations, nested observation wells provide vertical hydraulic gradient data and information related to the degree of connection between basin-fill aquifers and consolidated-rock aquifers.
Multiple-year water-level hydrographs are also presented for 32 wells to illustrate the aquifer system's response to interannual climate variations and well withdrawals.
The concern is that Nevada's desire to pump 50,000 acre feet of water per year for households in the Las Vegas area will draw the aquifer down to such an extent that existing uses will be jeopardized and native plant and animal life threatened.
SNWA wants to pump and pipe billions of gallons of groundwater from four remote valleys in White Pine and Lincoln Counties over 300 miles away to southern Nevada at a cost conservatively estimated to be over $15,000,000,000.
The decision by the Bureau of Land Management on SNWA's request for a Right-of-Way for the water pipeline is due out in this summer, 2012.
The BLM could ignore the findings of its Environmental Statement the severe impacts of the SNWA project on over 4,000 square miles in eastern Nevada and western Utah, including drying up of springs, creeks, wetlands, and meadows and massive ground subsidence in the four valleys, caused by the proposed groundwater mining.
This wholesale destruction and harm to public lands, to wildlife habitat, to wild horses, and to grazing, recreation and invaluable cultural resources in the four valleys would violate BLM's Congressional mandates to protect and manage public lands and resources.
"Everybody on the ditch has something to lose," said Whatcott. "This is like a murder mystery and we need to write the last chapter."
Gardner said that the real estate crash had worked in favor of getting the study done because it gave more time to the project.
"This is the best model," he said. "It is the most recent, It has the most data, the most information and is much more detailed than any of the other studies.
Ground water is shown at different ages, levels and temperatures, he said.
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