95 project gets boost in Senate

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, May 18, 2005 | 10:50 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Tuesday approved a $295 billion highway and transit projects bill that included roughly $1.3 billion for Nevada projects over five years and would push for widening work on U.S. 95 to continue.

That's $260 million each year, a considerable increase from the $199 million per year Nevada has received under the six-year highway bill approved in 1998, according to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

The Senate version of the highway bill includes a "placeholder" amendment that essentially directs Nevada to move forward with the U.S. 95 widening project that has been blocked by a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club. The group argues that planners have not adequately considered environmental factors, such as air pollution. But it's not clear what effect the amendment would have, if any, on the pending lawsuit.

Amendment author Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., hopes the amendment would not be necessary. Ensign expects that negotiations between the lawsuit parties, including the Sierra Club and the Transportation Department officials, will yield a compromise, perhaps as early as this week, that makes the amendment unnecessary.

The Senate's approval sets up an intense round of closed-door bargaining by a committee of House and Senate negotiators who will hammer out a final version of the bill, possibly by the end of the summer. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill if it is more than the House-approved $285 billion.

The Senate bill does not include as many earmarks for specific projects as the House version, although it sets aside $46.5 million for the Hoover Dam bypass project, according to Reid aides. The House version included $10 million for that project.

The ongoing $234 million bypass project, slated for completion in 2008, is being paid for with federal and state money, with the Nevada and Arizona contributing $20 million each. The bridge, which Congress last year officially named the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, is being constructed about a quarter mile-south of the dam to alleviate traffic congestion.

The House version of the bill included more than $100 million in specific earmarks for Nevada projects, such as $10 million each for an Interstate 15-Las Vegas Beltway interchange in North Las Vegas and the U.S. 95-beltway interchange in the northwest and $6 million for the Martin Luther King Boulevard-Industrial Road connector.

The House and Senate bills include money for a high-speed magnetic levitation, or maglev, train project. The House authorized $95 million and the Senate about $70 million for maglev, without naming a specific project recipient, congressional aides said.

Nevada officials have long tried to launch a $1.3 billion Las Vegas-to-Primm maglev project, the first leg of a proposed route that could eventually connect Las Vegas and Anaheim. Much of the planning work has been completed, but actual construction could not begin without significant federal funding, project planners have said. Competition for the money is fierce with routes in Pennsylvania and between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore among the front-runners. Much of the debate over the highway bill this year has centered on funding formulas and "donor" versus "recipient" states. Donor states pay more money in federal gasoline taxes than they receive in money for road projects, and their lawmakers have argued for at least 90 percent of the gas tax they pay. Nevada is a recipient state, receiving $1.02 back on every gas tax dollar it sent to Washington in 20 03.