Politicians may rail against earmarks, but Nevada and Nye County stand to gain from some projects funded in the federal Omnibus Spending Bill awaiting the president's signature which could be called earmarks.

A $650,000 earmark for a geological assessment of northern Nye County will be a project undertaken by faculty from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas geoscience department, geologists from the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology and geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey.

The assessment will include examining sediments collected in streams using a sophisticated chemical analysis to determine if there are potential finds upstream worth investigating in mountain ranges in Northern Nye County like the huge Round Mountain Gold Mine.

"We've known about oil and gas in Railroad Valley since the '50s when the first field was discovered," a spokesman said. "What we would do is take a broader view of the whole area and integrate all that we know that's been in these different pieces and look at the bigger picture and use that to assess whether there's need for further exploration."

Esmeralda County officials were unavailable for comment by presstime about the specifics of $300,000 earmarked to the city of Goldfield for improvements to the sewer treatment facilities.

The earmarks also include money for Highway 160 widening, a mineral assesment in northern Nye County, a science lab at Pahrump Valley High School and a new Amargosa Valley Community Center.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a prepared statement. "I applaud my colleagues for the transparency with which they operated in this process and reaffirm my commitment to Nevadans that I will always take care of their day-to-day needs."

U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., voted against the bill he said will cost over $400 billion and include too much wasteful spending.

Ensign said in a prepared statement, "Congress is the only one not cutting budgets. We are doing the exact opposite."

The specific earmarks include:

* $2.6 million for the Nevada Department of Transportation to continue widening Highway 160, Blue Diamond Road, part of the daily commute to Las Vegas for many Pahrump residents, a joint request by Senators Ensign and Reid.

* The Nye County School District received $143,000 for a Creative Learning SmartLab at Pahrump Valley High School designed to help students learn about different careers.

"We've been working on that for a couple of years trying to get it approved. We try to get money wherever we can," Nye County School Superintendent Rob Roberts said. "I've been working with Senator Reid's office for the past year and a half trying to find ways they can help us with the educational needs of the students of Nye County."

Roberts said grants for projects like this will be useful, since he's looking at state budget cuts of $407 per student, which will translate into $7.5 million less funding this year.

The SmartLab will be used by ninth grade students, a series of work stations where they are tested in hands-on problem solving in areas like computer graphics, science and data acquisition, control technology, circuitry, publishing, computer simulation and multimedia fields.

* A $190,000 allocation to Nye County for an Amargosa Valley Community Center won't be enough to construct a building, but could be used as seed money, Amargosa Valley Town Board Chairman Jan Cameron said.

"Our intent is to use it on the senior center if we can because we have the land and we have the need but we have to look at the exact language in the bill. It's going to cost a lot more than that to build a building," Cameron said.

"It's an antique building with antique infrastructure. It has serious problems. It's at a point where it made no sense to try to rehab it for a senior center," Cameron said.

APTUS designed a project that could be built in modulars over time on the 10 acres, she said.