Oct. 23, 2009

Salt Lake Tribune: Pipelines to Desert for Pumping are Bad Idea and should be scrapped.

The SL Tribune recognizes what everyone knows but no one says, namely the reason Utah accepted a bad deal for Snake Valley (giving SNWA 36,000 acre-feet of Snake Valley groundwater piped to Las Vegas) is because Utah wants a Lake Powell pipeline for its own sprawl in St. George. The solution: Kill 'em both.

" ... However, the elephant in the room, and the most likely explanation for Utah negotiators agreeing to the deal, is the proposed Lake Powell Pipeline. That project would pump water 120 miles from Lake Powell to St. George, and perhaps as far north as Cedar City. Because it would use a portion of Utah's undeveloped allocation under the Colorado River Compact, Utah doesn't want to rile other compact states, including Nevada, who might oppose the project. SNWA has threatened to make trouble for Utah if it doesn't play ball on Snake Valley.

We believe that the Lake Powell Pipeline is folly for the same reason that we oppose Las Vegas' scheme to pump groundwater from Snake Valley to Sin City. In both cases, the waters already are overallocated or nearly so, and with global warming, extracting more water from either Snake Valley or the Colorado River is unsustainable.

It would be doubly foolish, then, for Utah to sacrifice Snake Valley water on the altar of the Lake Powell Pipeline."

See the whole opinion below:

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_13620895