Federal fire aid withdrawn from appropriations bill

Monday, Nov. 1, 1999 | 10:08 a.m.

An $11.7 million appropriation in emergency fire aid to five rural northern Nevada counties was pulled from a Labor, Health and Human Services appropriation bill and will probably be reintroduced as stand-alone legislation in the next session of Congress, Jay Cranford, an aide to U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., told the Elko Daily Free Press on Friday.

The fire aid was included in a disaster bill for victims of Hurricane Floyd in North Carolina, who also must wait until the next session, Cranford added.

Under the bill, 95 percent of the money, or $10.53 million, would go to the Nevada Association of Counties for distribution to Elko, Eureka, Lander, Humboldt and Pershing counties. Five percent, or $585,000, would go to the University of Nevada, Reno, Cooperative Extension Service for research and education pertaining to range fires.

The bill would provide funds for private land burned. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has already begun reseeding the public land damaged by the fires.

The 1999 fire season destroyed an estimated 1.6 million acres in Nevada. Of that, about 325,000 was private property.