LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada's top state water official begins two weeks of hearings Monday on a crucial question in a plan for Las Vegas to drill drinking water wells beneath arid rural valleys just west of the Nevada-Utah state line.
State Engineer Jason King in Carson City has to decide — again — if pumping will irreparably harm basins serving farmers, Indian tribes, a Mormon church ranch and the counties of White Pine in Nevada and Millard and Juab in Utah.
The hearings amount to a do-over, ordered by a state judge in Ely who rejected as "arbitrary and capricious" King's March 2012 approval of the Southern Nevada Water Authority plan.
The judge ordered the state to recalculate if there's enough water, and set standards for limiting "unreasonable effects" if pumping is allowed.