Nevada to get funds from bill

Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 | 10:12 a.m.

SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Nevada will receive $3.5 million for projects ranging from fighting crickets to rangeland conservation as part of the Agriculture Department spending bill approved by the Senate on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said.

The House approved a similar bill, but a Senate-House panel plans to meet to hammer out the differences between the two versions.

The bill also includes a provision that keeps Nevada out of a federal milk pricing system that will curb milk price increases, Reid's office said.

According to Reid, the bill includes:

/bullnew $1.8 million for programs to fight the invasive plants tamarisk and cheatgrass, a wildfire fuel and native sagebrush competitor.

/bullnew $750,000 for reforestation programs, such as planting young trees, and erosion control work in the Carson City area, where a wild fire raged in July 2004.

/bullnew $504,000 for the state's Arid Rangeland Initiative for other anti-invasive species programs; plus another $100,000 for a separate "cooperative weed management" program targeting noxious and invasive plants.

/bullnew $250,000 for a rangeland conservation program aimed at reducing wildfire fuels.

/bullnew $150,000 for programs to control grasshoppers and Mormon crickets, which eat sagebrush, lawns and crops.

Mormon cricket infestations have doubled each year in recent years, swarming 11 million acres of Northern Nevada last year, Reid's office said.