|
- Commissioners keep up the “crops or craps” water fight with Nevada
|
CROPS OR CRAPS • Cecil Garland, Dennis Timm, Kathy Hill and Ken Hill from the West Desert Area of Juab County met with the Juab County Commission on Monday to plan strategy to continue the fight over water with the SNWA Water project which, if completed, with deliver water to Las Vegas.
By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
“The Snake Valley Hydrologic Basin is almost entirely in Juab County,” said Cecil Garland, a water user from Juab County’s West Desert.
Garland, Dennis Timm, Kathy Hill and Ken Hill met with Juab County Commissioners to request that the commission keep fighting to preserve the water of the county.
“The ultimate question is, can one state take water from another state?” said Garland.
The most immediate threat is the proposed groundwater pipeline from Las Vegas (Clark County) to Snake Valley (White Pine County). Many of West Desert residents fear a project such as this could result in another Owens Valley disaster.
That was a scenario where rural communities and entire ecosystems were devastated so that urban areas could thrive.
Timm and Garland have bordering ranches in and both said they were already having problems getting enough water to maintain the fields they needed to provide a livelihood.
“We are in an extended drought,” said Garland.
Greasewood can put roots down 60-feet to reach ground water, he said. Greasewood plants grow in alkaline or saline soils. Greasewood grows in association with other alkaline plants such as shadscale, saltbush, halogeton and salt grass.
Livestock utilize greasewood for winter and early spring browse.
“The greasewood plants are dying,” he said.
The Report of Investigation 254, Utah Geological Survey, A Division of the Utah Department of Natural resources, indicated that there needed to be concern.
If water is pumped out of the aquifer, he said, there will be great problems.
“The discharge is greater than the recharge,” Garland said.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority has proposed a system of 146 water-supply wells in south-central and south-eastern Nevada to supply water to the Las Vegas area.
Costing about $2 billion, SNWA plans to drill 146 water production wells in south central and southwestern Nevada that will produce up to 200,000 acre-feet of new water supply. Receiving just over 4-inches of annual precipitation, the Project will allow SNWA to meet its future water needs for one of the driest and fastest growing areas in the United States.
The SNWA Project has raised concerns in Utah.
Most of the groundwater development occurs within the boundaries of Nevada, except one segment of the Project, which will draw 20,000 to 25,000 acre-feet of water from Snake Valley located in eastern Nevada and western Utah with most of the valley located on Utah’s side of the border.
Also of concern is the belief that the groundwater aquifer in Spring Valley, located west of Snake Valley, is connected to the Snake Valley aquifer, which may further adversely impact Snake Valley ground water levels.
will need additional water by 2015 SNWA when its existing resources will be exhausted.
There is opposition to the SNWA Project by the environmental community and ranchers in the Snake Valley. Their concern is that pumping will lower the groundwater table damaging the valley’s ecosystem and ranching enterprises.
Garland said he told the Utah Legislative Taskforce the same thing he told Juab County Commissioners.
“There is no surplus water in the Snake Valley...springs are already drying up, no water in the ditches and trees are dying.”
“There is an essential decision to be made–are you going to use that water for crops or craps.”
Another vocal opponent of the Project is Dean Baker, a rancher from Baker, Nevada.
Numeric models show a potential groundwater decline from the proposed wells of greater than 100-feet in westernmost Millard County. The magnitude of this drawdown would adversely affect both existing and future spring, surface, and groundwater uses in Utah.
“If they pump the water from the aquifer, it will pull brackish water into Callao,” said Garland.
Groundwater in the Snake Valley Hydrologic basin resides primarily in two main aquifers, Quaternary-Tertiary basin fill and Paleozoic carbonate rocks. Storage and transport of groundwater occurs in intergranular pore space in the basin-fill aquifer and in solution-widened joints, faults and bedding planes in the carbonate bedrock aquifer.
Hydraulic parameters of the two primary aquifers are relatively well known, but their subsurface geometries, extent, and the influence of geologic structures on ground-water flow are poorly constrained.
“The more they study, they more they don’t know,” said Kathy Hill. “It is the top level that feeds our system.”
She said the residents of Eskdale cannot put a well deeper than the 100-feet because they cannot get water. If it comes to that, they will be out of water.
The subsurface structure and the hydrologic connectivity of the main aquifers are complex due to the geologic evolution and structural complexity of the area. An important, but unresolved, problem is to determine the pathway of ground-water as it moves from recharge areas high in the Snake Range to the principal aquifers below the valley.
The recharge areas are in the lower plate of a major east-dipping, low-angle normal fault zone that is likely a barrier to ground-water flow across its plane.
The proposed wells are located in this structurally complex transition zone, where the recharge is actively entering the aquifers. The location and depth of the proposed wells will, therefore, strongly influence whether they capture recharge that would otherwise enter the primary aquifers, and the parts of the aquifers that will be impacted most.
“We are trying to fight the proposal,” said LuWayne Walker, commissioner.
He and Val Jones, commission chairman, and Chad Winn, commissioner, have attended meetings to make their objections known. They have, and will continue to, contact the Washington delegation seeking their support for strengthening the Utah rancher’s position.
“If you put up a lot of money, as Nevada has, you get what you pay for,” said Jones.
Utah has put up a paltry amount to fight the proposal by comparison with the many millions that Nevada has put into the support of their stand.
“We have shared that idea with our state representative and senator,” he said.
Ken Hill said, that he thought the commissioners should keep up the pressure.
“You have much more clout than we have,” he said. |
