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Area roads, runways, streams, salmon get funding from appropriations bill
2/14/03 Spokane and other Eastern Washington communities will be getting federal money for roads, runways, streams and salmon in the huge appropriations bill being passed by Congress this week. Orchardists will get help with tree viruses and some community programs will get money for construction projects. Sen. Patty Murray, a ranking Democrat on the transportation appropriations subcommittee, said the bill "maintained critical funding for the state's urgent transportation, health care and education needs." Rep. George Nethercutt, a Spokane Republican who serves on the House spending committee, said the money for programs around Washington "is especially important in a year when our state is facing an astronomical deficit." Among the projects and programs scheduled for federal money in the $397 billion spending plan: • $4 million for improvements to a taxiway at Spokane International Airport. • $4 million to the North Spokane Freeway planned to link Interstate 90 with U.S. Highways 2 and 395. • $3 million for Monroe Street Bridge repairs. • $2.5 million for Spokane Transit Authority for a facility for paratransit vehicles. • $1.18 million to Pullman Transit to replace five buses that lack wheelchair lifts. • $900,000 for the Inland Northwest Natural Resources Research Center at Gonzaga University. • $750,000 for a salmon habitat conservation plan in Walla Walla and Columbia counties. • $650,000 for a project by farmers, tribes, environmentalists and the Corps of Engineers to protect the Walla Walla River watershed. • $405,000 to help the Boys and Girls Club of Spokane County remodel a north Spokane elementary school. • $250,000 to the Washington State University facility in Prosser to find ways to detect and fight viruses in fruit trees. • $225,000 to help the Transitions Women's Drop-in Center purchase a new building. • $100,000 to the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery for a national demonstration
project on preventing child abuse and neglect. |