A group of environmentalists and ranchers operating as the Great Basin Water Network have asked Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to intervene and block the scheduled Sept. 5 signing of a compact between Nevada and Utah. The compact would apportion water rights in the Snake Valley, which sits on the border between the two states, near Wheeler Peak and the Great Basin National Park, east of Ely.

In a letter to Sen. Reid, the protesters complain the compact will "ease the way" for the Southern Nevada Water Authority to start drawing water in the area, with the long-term goal of transporting it by pipeline to Las Vegas.

Of course it will -- though the authority will still have to acquire water rights and state permits, like any other water user.

It's premature to sign the agreement by Sept. 5 as planned, complains Susan Lynn, executive director of the network, since the parties do not yet have comprehensive data on water availability and recharge rates, and because more time is needed to appraise possible threats to the nearby national park.

It's tempting to ask how long a delay the letter-writers would deem appropriate, but would anyone really believe an answer other than "pretty much forever"?

When Sen. Reid won passage of the 2004 Lincoln County land use bill, Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, attached a rider stipulating that the states of Utah and Nevada must come to an agreement over the allocation of the shared water resources in the Snake Valley before the water authority's project can begin.

That makes sense, and the water authority appears to have been diligently working to obey that requirement. To object that the parties should now be prevented from making a good-faith effort to obey this law, by coming to an agreement in principle that fully satisfies Utah, smells a bit of foot-dragging and the typical green anti-growth, anti-development strategy of "delay, delay, delay."

Such a pipeline will have to satisfy many environmental requirements, integrate many environmental safeguards, and will doubtless be permitted by the state only if it can be demonstrated that it won't drain the sparsely inhabited Spring and Snake valleys dry.

But these valleys are not deserts. They are high; they abound in both surface and underground water. And how does one determine how fast those aquifers recharge? That can be done only by starting to pump them, and measuring what that does to underground waterflows.

The compact has been under discussion for a long time, and, "The sooner we do that, the better off Nevada will be," Sen. Reid said Wednesday.

Good. It's understandable that Northern Nevadans want to watch these plans carefully, seeking guarantees that they'll retain the quantity of water that's already being put to beneficial use there.

But do the 80 signers of this letter have either the resources or some alternative plan to supply Nevada's economic engine, the booming Las Vegas Valley, with sufficient additional water in the decades to come, especially if the Colorado River drought continues?

That seems highly unlikely.

There is no reason to seek federal intervention to block an agreement between two willing neighbor states.