Utah/Nevada water agreement may be near

Utah and Nevada appear closer to an agreement on Clark County’s plan to raid rural eastern Nevada water sources.

In a speech in Salt Lake City last week, Utah natural resources director Mike Styler said the agreement would allow Clark County to tap an aquifer that straddles the border between the two states but use only the water to which Nevada is entitled.

“Utah’s official position is, ‘We support the pipeline, you just can’t have our water,'” he said.

Supporting the pipeline, however, is more or less irrelevant, since a federal law allows Clark to build it.

There is a national park, a wildlife refuge and a tribal reservation in the region.

Styler said air quality has not been a subject of the talks. In the once-fertile Owens Valley of California, whose water was used by Los Angeles to feed growth, the valley dried up and became dust-ridden.