Reid deft in getting White Pine bill passed

Monday, Dec. 25, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

WASHINGTON - By many measures, Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid's ability to pass the White Pine County land bill in the dead of night on the final day of Congress was a major coup for Nevada.

Brent Eldridge, chairman of the White Pine County Commission, was glued to C-SPAN for six hours once he got word that the bill might move late that Friday night earlier this month.

Although he never doubted Reid and the Nevada delegation would be successful, Eldridge said last week: "I'm still not sure how that happened. But I am pleased."

Very few pieces of legislation passed in the lame duck session before Congress adjourned.

But days before the session ended, Reid negotiated the bill into a more than 300-page tax package that was one of the main pieces of legislation expected to pass.

In the early hours of that Saturday morning, the White Pine bill, tucked into the massive tax bill, was approved by Congress.

Even more, the bill contained an eleventh-hour addition that had nothing to do with White Pine County.

Reid and fellow Nevada Sen. John Ensign included a provision to advance a potentially controversial California reservoir project that would provide water for as many as 120,000 homes annually in Southern Nevada for several years. The project had been the top priority of the session for the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Pat Mulroy, the authority's general manager who had been working the phones those final days for the reservoir project, called it a "wild 72 hours" leading up to the vote.

What makes the victory all the more dramatic is that a majority of the White Pine County commissioners did not want the legislation.

Just a week before the vote on Capitol Hill, three of the five commissioners, with Eldridge absent, voted to abandon the bill unless it included funds for a long-sought study of Water Authority plans to pull ground water from White Pine's aquifers.

Water wars have waged fiercely in the county, and the commissioners wanted to send Reid and the delegation a bold - and some say misguided - ultimatum.

"We were expecting the bill to be dead, not go anywhere," said Commissioner Gary Perea, one of those who opposed the bill. He had just lost his seat in the November election.

"It has our name on it," Perea added. "And if we don't want it, we should be able to have that opportunity to say, 'No.' "

Many rural counties might embrace such a bill, which would provide the bankrupt county with 45,000 federal acres for economic development and preserve more than 10 times that much as protected wilderness.

But the renegade commissioners saw unexpected extras being added to the bill to benefit other regions - among them, $750 million for a wastewater pipe for Southern Nevada, which eventually was deleted - and thought their long-sought study should be included.

They were warned that pushing for the study would kill the legislation. The Southern Nevada Water Authority opposed more investigation, saying it had already funded one study and pledged to conduct ongoing surveys as part of its proposal to draw the water.

So be it, the commissioners said. They would rather lose the land deal than stand by and allow the Water Authority to take the water unchallenged.

So imagine Commissioner John Chachas' surprise when he received the news from the White Pine county clerk that the bill had passed.

"I kind of feel like they backdoored us," said Chachas, who had previously announced that he would step down this month after 16 years on the commission.

He said he's not unhappy about the gains his county enjoys from the bill: It will get land to extend the airport runway as well as to expand an industrial park near a new coal-fired power plant being discussed for the region. But he is soured on the process.

"It just goes to show Clark County is running White Pine County," Chachas said.

Reid's office said there is nothing back-door about legislation that has been in public for months and gone through hearings. Tacking the bill onto larger legislation is simply how business is sometimes conducted on Capitol Hill.

Reid and Ensign "were very public in their commitment to getting this legislation passed," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said.

"They make no apologies for delivering for Nevada."

Ensign's office said the bulk of the bill had won support from the commission and others. Too much effort had been invested to try again next year.

"We understand where they're coming from on this," said John Lopez, Ensign's chief of staff.

"In the end I think this is a package that's very beneficial for the entire county. In the end I think good judgment had to prevail."

The bill, which President Bush signed Wednesday, is the third in a series of land bills that Reid and Ensign have championed since 2002 as they progress county by county in setting aside land for development or protection. More land bills are expected.

The bills are increasingly being embraced by wilderness enthusiasts who see them as their best chance for protecting Nevada's rugged landscape from development. Other environmentalists, however, bristle at the trade-off that allows federal lands to be sold for development.

The White Pine bill, like the others, sets aside federal lands for development in exchange for other acreage being preserved as wilderness. Funds from the land sales go toward purchasing environmentally sensitive property and county projects.