WASHINGTON — A sweeping bill that would protect swaths of land in Colorado from development and fund restoration projects is stalled until next year, blocked by a Republican opponent.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada told Democrats that procedural hurdles thrown up by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma will block passage during the current lame-duck session, said Matt Lee-Ashley, spokesman for Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado.
The legislation packages more than 150 bills, including 10 affecting Colorado. Those include a measure that would designate as wilderness 250,000 acres within Rocky Mountain National Park; a bill authorizing the construction of a pipeline to deliver drinking water to southeastern Colorado; legislation setting aside 210,677 acres of federal land on the Uncompahgre Plateau as the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area; and bills establishing national heritage areas for the Sangre de Cristo and South Park regions.
There also is a bill that would create within the Bureau of Land Management a National Landscape Conservation System. It would oversee the protection and restoration of nationally significant landscapes.
Coburn opposes the bill because of its expense and because it restricts energy exploration, said his spokesman, Don Tatro. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill’s price tag at $3.4 billion from 2009 through 2013, Tatro said.
Democratic leaders united the myriad lands bills in one measure to build support sufficient to get around Coburn’s opposition. He calls the bill a “land grab” with unnecessary projects.
Coburn is running out the clock by threatening to require a full reading of the extensive bill, along with enforcing other rules, Lee-Ashley said.
“Sen. Reid wants to move to it in January,” Lee-Ashley said. “We’re hopeful we’re going to be able to turn to it first thing. There are a lot of bills in there that are important to Colorado.”
