Nevada water project report released

Federal officials are collecting public input on an exhaustive review of plans to pipe groundwater to Las Vegas from across eastern Nevada.

The Bureau of Land Management issued a draft environmental impact statement on the Southern Nevada Water Authority project on June 10, officially launching a 90-day comment period.

People have until Sept. 8 to weigh in on the massive document, which is available on the Internet and in libraries and government offices across Nevada and Utah.

The draft report has been in the works since 2005. It examines the potential effects of the water authority's plan to pipe almost 220,000 acre-feet of groundwater a year from rural valleys in Clark, Lincoln and White Pine counties.

One acre-foot of water is enough to supply two average Las Vegas homes for a year, and the proposed project could deliver water for roughly 440,000 households.

First, the water authority needs federal permission to build more than 300 miles of buried pipeline, 325 miles of overhead power lines, seven electrical substations, five pumping stations, a water treatment plant and an underground storage reservoir.

Most of the facilities would be on federal land.

Authority officials insist they have not committed to building the pipeline. They simply want to be ready should the need arise.

"This isn't about construction. This is about getting the permitting done," said Scott Huntley, spokesman for the regional water agency.

The project has been in the works since before 1989, when Southern Nevada water officials filed for water rights across rural Nevada.

The pipeline was meant to supply growth in the Las Vegas Valley, but it now is being touted as drought protection for a community that gets 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River.

The authority already has spent tens of millions of dollars on studies, preliminary designs and legal work for the project, which is expected to cost at least $2 billion, according to agency estimates several years old.

Opponents predict the pipeline will cost considerably more and could destroy wildlife and the livelihoods of residents as far north as Great Basin National Park, 300 miles from Las Vegas.

State water regulators will hold a hearing later this year on most of the authority's groundwater applications for the project. The hearing, set to start Sept. 26 and last into November, is a repeat of previous hearings.

Last year, the state Supreme Court overturned the authority's water rights in four rural valleys and ordered the state engineer to rehear the matter.

The Bureau of Land Management's draft report examines six alternatives, from the authority's full project to no action at all.

The document is available for free on the bureau's website, www.blm.gov/5w5c.

Written comments can be submitted by email to nvgwprojects@blm.gov; faxed to (775) 861--6689; or mailed to SNWA Project, Bureau of Land Management, Attn: Penny Woods, P.O. Box 12000, Reno, NV 89520.

Bureau officials plan to hold public meetings in Nevada and Utah during the comment period, but no dates or locations have been announced. The bureau has not set a completion date for the final version of its impact study.

Environmentalist Rob Mrowka is among those already weighing in on the draft report and the pipeline.

"This is not just a bad idea from the perspective of the environment and rural communities, it simply makes no sense economically or to taxpayers," said Mrowka, an ecologist and Nevada conservation advocate for the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. "Why invest in draining ancient, nonrenewable groundwater when ocean desalinization is an option and will provide for the extremely long term?"

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal .com or 702-383-0350.