LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL - A state Supreme Court ruling issued Thursday could seriously delay or halt a multibillion-dollar plan to supply Las Vegas with groundwater from across eastern Nevada.

In a stunning reversal of a District Court decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the groundwater applications underpinning the pipeline project might not be valid, raising the possibility that the Southern Nevada Water Authority will have to start the state permitting process all over again.

Within hours of the decision, Utah officials announced they were backing away from a water-sharing agreement with Nevada, and the authority filed a flurry of new water applications.

One longtime critic of the pipeline project, White Pine County Commissioner Gary Perea, called on the authority to "go back to the beginning and do this right" or "simply abandon the scheme and work to make Las Vegas sustainable."

At issue are the dozens of applications filed by the Las Vegas Valley Water District with the state engineer in 1989 for unappropriated groundwater in rural areas as much as 300 miles away. The water was originally sought to supply growth in Southern Nevada, but it is now seen as a safety net for a community that gets 90 percent of its water from the drought-stricken Colorado River.

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