Six states rip Utah plan to tap Colorado

CARSON CITY — Nevada and five other states in the West that rely on the Colorado River to sustain cities and farms criticized a plan to build an underground pipeline that would transport billions of gallons of water through the desert to southwest Utah.

In a joint letter Tuesday, water officials from Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming urged the U.S. government to halt the approval process for the project, which would bring water 140 miles from Lake Powell in northern Arizona to the growing area surrounding St. George, Utah.

If the approval moves forward, state water leaders wrote, “multiyear litigation” will likely be inevitable and could complicate negotiations over the future of the Colorado River, which serves 40 million people but faces threats from persistent drought and climate change that are dwindling the supply of water.

“That is not a recipe for creating the kind of meaningful and positive change needed to sustain the Colorado River in the coming decades,” they wrote.

The Lake Powell Pipeline project would divert 86,000 acre-feet of water to Washington County, Utah. The state is entitled to the water under agreements between the states that date back a century, but the project’s critics worry the pipeline could further deplete Lake Powell — one of the two man-made reservoirs where Colorado River water is stored.

If water levels in either Lake

Powell or the other reservoir — Lake Mead — fall farther, states could be forced to limit the amount of water they can send to growing cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix, as well as farmers throughout the region that help stock supermarkets.

Under the agreements between the seven states, cuts would hit Arizona, California and Nevada before affecting Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Comments on an environmental impact report for the proposed pipeline were due Tuesday, and the Interior Department is expected to issue a final report after its review, which would bring the project a step closer to approval.

In the letter, state water leaders argue that legal and operational issues haven’t been resolved and “that work is undeniably best undertaken” through negotiations between the states rather than lawsuits. They asked Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to delay approving the final environmental impact statement.