Senate bill includes Utah projects

WASHINGTON — The Senate has approved a massive, overdue 2003 spending bill — which includes more than $240 million for Utah projects that have hung in limbo for the past several months.

The $390 billion bill combines 11 of the 13 annual appropriations bills that Congress must pass each year. Normally, they are due before the new federal fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

However, last year Congress was mired in partisan politics before the elections and managed to pass only two of those 13 bills, for defense and military construction. It passed stopgap legislation to continue current levels of funding for other agencies until next month.

Thursday's vote was 69-29.

Both Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, voted for the bill. It now goes to the House, which is expected to include its own amendments. A House-Senate conference is then expected to iron out differences, and possibly lead to final passage into law next month.

Utah projects in that big package range from funding extension of the TRAX light rail to building a new visitors center at Arches National Park and helping to remove dangerous uranium mill tailings near Moab.

Bennett, the only member of Congress from Utah who is on an appropriations committee, has posted a complete list of Utah projects on his Web site at bennett.senate.gov.

Some of the highlights include:

• $76.6 million to extend the TRAX line to the University of Utah Medical Center.

• $5.4 million for a new visitors center at Arches National Park.

• $10.6 million to begin construction of a new federal courthouse in Salt Lake City.

• $3.9 million to help clean up the Atlas uranium mill tailings near Moab. The Energy Department is finalizing studies on options of how best to do that. The tailings are leaching radioactive materials into the adjacent Colorado River.

• $970,000 to help Sevier, Wayne and Sanpete counties buy equipment to detect methamphetamine labs.

• $2.4 million for a new water pipeline in Monticello. "This new pipeline will help ease water shortages in San Juan County, shortages which have only been exacerbated by recent drought conditions," Bennett said.

• $1.26 million for a Sevier County Multi-Events Center. It would match $19 million in local funds to build the 5,000-seat facility.

---

E-mail: lee@desnews.com