Utah lawmakers want Congress to spend more than $6 million to examine the proposed Las Vegas water pipeline, fearing it could lead to dust storms in the highly populated Salt Lake valley.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority wants to pipe groundwater from northern Nevada to Las Vegas, and in April, Nevada State Engineer Tracy Taylor authorized the Southern Nevada Water Authority to take up to 40,000 acre-feet of water annually from the aquifer west of Great Basin National Park.

One problem is that some of these aquifers just don't sit conveniently under one state but straddle those pesky boundary lines. Same thing with individual ranchers already sitting over the aquifers--if someone next to you starts taking water from under their property, and if they take enough (like trying to water the lawns in Las Vegas) the level of the whole aquifer goes down if it can't be replenished. So southern Nevada could be taking water which affects aquifer levels in Utah. I remember reading how a town in Texas took so much water from the aquifer under it that the whole town dropped several feet as the aquifer emptied. Of course, Texas has a cowboy attitude toward water rights--he who can get it, can have it, even if his neighbor loses the water in his well. It might not take much for the wells of ranchers in Nevada or Utah to run dry if the aquifer level lowers. So who to appease...a few measly ranchers and the state of Utah, or Sin City, a glorious citadel of conservation and productivity.