Water

Nathan Waid
This past summer I worked out in Utah at Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, in the middle of the Utah’s West Desert, was mainly created for water bird conservation. The refuge is broken up into a wetland impoundment system fed by natural springs. The refuge has a major problem facing it; Nevada’s attempt to perform water drawdowns from the Snake Valley. Snake Valley is important to the refuge for the fact that the refuge’s spring water supply is linked to the snake valley, so a drawdown would affect the refuge. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is trying very hard to get legislation passed to drawdown the Snake Valley to increase the size of Las Vegas, but have failed so far in their attempts. The reason being is both Utah and Nevada need to agree to the drawdown of snake valley, and the Utah government has stonewalled the plan. Utahans have fought hard to not allow the legislation to pass and the Utah government, so far, has listened.
One issue I have with the plan is nothing is known about what will happen to Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge if the legislation passes and the refuge should a top concern as the refuge is a publicly owned resource. The study area that was chosen appeared to be conveniently selected, only including areas, I think, they wanted to include. All of the statistical models I have saw while working on the refuge, did not show how the drawdown will affect the refuge. Considering all of this, The Water Authority has asked to pump more than 50,000 acre feet (about 16 billion gallons) of water a year from the valley that lies about 250 miles north of Las Vegas in Nevada and across the Utah border. Diagrams they proposed showed that water from the valley will not stabilize from the pumping until 50 years from now. How is draining the Snake Valley a sustainable act? Just from sheer numbers alone, one should question how you cannot include all areas connected to the valley.
Another issue I have is of having a very large city in the middle of the desert. Right now, the population of Las Vegas is around one and a half million people, which is unsustainable but workable. The need of water from the snake valley is not to sustain the current population, but rather to support a new population. Las Vegas wants to increase their population to about 3 million with the new water. There is no conceivable reason a city of that size should exist in extreme desert conditions. Is there actually a feasible reason Las Vegas should grow? If they indeed need to grow, a solution to their need for water could be to find a way to draw from the ocean, desalinize the ocean, and trade the desalinized ocean water for water that is closer. Not matter what, another solution, besides draining Snake Valley, is needed.
Is Nevada greedy in their pursuit of the water from the Snake Valley? I believe so and if it were me, I would never allow Nevada to even propose such a preposterous idea without more thorough and more extensive research. Although I think draining the Snake Valley is a terrible idea, I can see the legislation passing, because Las Vegas is a large tourist spot with a lot of influence.