Congress OKs Nevada Land Deal, Enabling Water Project -Salt Lake Tribune - Nation/World

This is a positive move...

Congress OKs Nevada land deal, enabling water project
Boon for Las Vegas: A huge area will be labeled wilderness in return for allowing development of formerly public land
Los Angeles Times

Congress gave final approval Wednesday to wide-ranging lands legislation that sells off federal holdings in one of Nevada's least populated counties, creates more than a dozen new wilderness areas in the state and eases the way for a controversial water project.
Returning this week after an election recess, the House passed a Senate-amended version of a public lands bill that rewards an array of Nevada interests, from water utilities to wilderness buffs to developers.
The legislation grants rent-free rights of way across federal land for a massive proposed pipeline system that would carry groundwater from rural Nevada to the Las Vegas area.
It authorizes the sale of 90,000 acres of public land - the equivalent of three San Franciscos - for private development in Lincoln County, a huge, lonely swath of southeastern Nevada that is almost entirely owned by the federal government.
It establishes 768,000 acres of new wilderness in Lincoln County, among the largest blocs of wilderness to be designated by Congress in the past decade.
And it eliminates a federal right of way that interferes with a big southern Nevada development proposed by a friend of one of the bill's sponsors, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, the soon-to-be Senate minority leader.
''This bill is the epitome of compromise,'' said Nevada Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons. ''We succeed in raising the private property tax base a modest amount while protecting an unprecedented amount of land. I am especially pleased that it will specifically support economic development, increased recreation and new tourism opportunities in one of Nevada's most rural counties. Read More.....

''Salt Lake Tribune - Nation/World