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      From: <Gostalinda@aol.com> 
      To: <snakevalley@utah.gov>, <snakevalley@water.nv.gov> 
      Date: Tuesday - August 18, 2009 9:45 PM 
      Subject: Comments to the Snake Valley Groundwater System Management Plan   





      Comments to the Snake Valley Groundwater System Management Plan

      To whom it may concern:

      I attended the Salt Lake City presentation of  Utah DNR et al  regarding 
      the Snake Valley water removal project today, and would like to offer  a 
      few 
      comments.  Before I start, I will bring to your attention that you  hosted 
      a 
      presentation, not a public hearing.  You took but did not record  
      questions 
      and answers.  Public hearings should be recorded and the  questions and 
      answers should be part of the record. All of which I am sure you  know and 

      calculated carefully. The result of so doing is to destroy any trust in  
      the 
      planning group as honorable and fair.  That's a bad and wasteful  outcome.

      1.   Mitigation can only be in dollars if the water has already  been put 
      to a non-stoppable use.  Las Vegas should be prohibited from  taking the 
      water and using it to support infrastructre growth like housing until  
      some 
      trial period has proved the water removal to be benign.

      2.  Although your (mine too) attorney insists there is no other  vehicle 
      than the Supreme Court of the United States in case of a dispute, it is  
      possible for the parties to bindingly agree to other methods of  
      arbitration.  
      The Colorado River Water Compact has been notoriously  difficult to 
      arbitrate, 
      yet they have managed to do so, and there is precedent  and proven methods 

      for cooperation to be gleaned from their practice book.   I think further 
      work to make the agreement more binding can succeed and should  be 
      undertaken.

      3.  Along with # 2, I think too many words are meaningless in the  
      agreement.  I would substitute "shall" and "will" in many cases, for  
      various forms 
      of "might" and "may."  If A, then B WILL happen, eliminating  the  "maybe 
      could" concepts.  Not  "we agree to address" adverse  impacts, but that 
      "adverse impacts will be mitigated before...."   The  large amount of non 
      binding 
      verbiage in the document appears to be  deliberate obfuscation, and the 
      public is very aware of it.

      4.  There should be a section of the document which addresses funding  of 
      monitoring in a binding fashion.  I suggest that a portion of the value  
      of 
      the water sent through the pipeline be dedicated in binding agreement to 
      the  
      monitoring.  Monitoring should not be left to the whim of the budget  
      committee of the State Legislature(s).

      5.  There are new and better ways to monitor the effects of pumping  from 
      the aquifer.  The newest I am aware of (this is not my field) is  reported 
      in 
      Science News this week. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment  
      satellite co sponsored by NASA and DLR, the German Aerospace Center, is 
      designed  
      to map Earth's gravitational field and detect changes over time. It 
      apparently  was able to detect huge deficits in groundwater in northern 
      India and 
      map  changes thereto over the relatively short time span of  six years.

      Here is the url for the article regarding the GRACE satellite, which has  
      the ability to synthesize groundwater levels, and depletion thereof. I do 
      not 
      know how long this posting will remain available, so I gave a print copy 
      of the  article to you at the presentation. 

      _http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/46322/title/Big_Gulp%2C_Asian_st
      yle_ 
      (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/46322/title/Big_Gulp,_Asian_style) 


      Thank you for consideration of my remarks,

      Linda Johnson
      1356 E  4500 S, Salt Lake City UT 84117; home phone 801-277-4499
      submitted 8/18/09