Nevada water projects could get $40 million

Benjamin Grove

Friday, July 15, 2005 | 10:02 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada would receive $40 million for three water projects under the $10.6 billion House version of the Water Resources Development Act approved Thursday, a ballooning bill that has irked pork-project critics.

The legislation earmarks $30 million for the Clean Water Coalition -- the cities of Las Vegas and Henderson and Clark County Water Reclamation District -- for its effort to pipe Southern Nevada's treated wastewater directly to the floor of Lake Mead, instead of through the Las Vegas Wash and into the lake.

The wastewater effluent harms Las Vegas Wash and wash-supported wetlands.

The legislation also sets aside $5 million for Henderson to upgrade its southwest treatment plant to make use of a "membrane" technology designed to assure more water conservation and lessen outflow to the Las Vegas Wash.

The $35 million for the wastewater projects was part of a $1.6 billion amendment that watchdog groups say was attached late in the budget process to a bill that lawmakers had already loaded up with projects for their districts.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., appealed to his colleagues on the House Transportation Committee to include the money in the bill, Porter spokesman T.J. Crawford said.

The bill also contained $5 million secured by Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., for Northern Nevada, for an ecosystem restoration project of the Truckee River, which flows from Lake Tahoe through Reno.

The water resources bill now contains 757 projects and studies, according to the group Taxpayers for Common Sense. The group has been critical of congressional deficit-spending.

From a budget standpoint, "they're eating steak and drinking champagne when they should be eating ramen noodles," group spokesman Keith Ashdown said.

The water resources bill is typically approved every two years with a pricetag of about $2 billion, Ashdown said. But disputes in Congress, in part over the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the project money, have delayed a new Corps spending bill since 2000.

The bill also includes $7 million for a drought study in the Southwest. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., also a member of the Transportation Committee, lobbied her colleagues for the federal study of drought, especially in the Colorado and Rio Grande river basins and the Great Basin.