L.A.-Nevada Parkland Swap Killed by Congress : Environment: Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) defeats a bill to trade two Southland canyons for 5,882 acres and a power corridor.

The city of Los Angeles will have to look elsewhere for future electric power, and conservationists must find another way to acquire 392 pristine acres in the Santa Monica Mountains as parkland after a bill that would have paved the way for these developments quietly died in Congress last week.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) killed legislation that would have traded about 294 acres of Upper Franklin Canyon above Beverly Hills and 98 acres of Corral Canyon above Malibu--both owned by the city--to the National Park Service for about 5,882 acres of Nevada land owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Both agencies are part of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Much of the Nevada property, in turn, was to have been used for a power plant that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power proposed to build around the turn of the century in White Pine County in eastern Nevada. In addition, the measure would have established a 12-mile federal utility corridor in Nevada for electric transmission lines.

The land-swap bill, long sought by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), was overwhelmingly approved by the House earlier this month but failed to move in the Senate because of Reid’s opposition.

Reid, who was urged by environmentalists in his state to oppose the measure, said Californians should put their power plants in their own state.

Moreover, he asserted that the plant was a “plastic carrot” that Los Angeles never intended to build. Rather, he said, the city was using the proposal to gain the mile-wide power corridor so that it could buy and transmit surplus electricity from an existing plant in Utah.

“They were trying to shield their real intentions, which was to send cheap Utah power to feed Los Angeles’ power demands,” Reid said. “What do we get out of power lines?”

Eldon Cotton, the DWP’s assistant general manager for power, said Monday that Los Angeles had initially intended to use the corridor to transmit surplus power from utilities in Utah, Idaho and Montana but eventually planned to build a power plant in Nevada as well. He said other Western states would also have used the corridor to exchange power on a seasonal basis.

“We’re surprised and disappointed,” Cotton said. “This was by far the best option and the one that was preferred by Western utilities.”

Berman acknowledged that “the implications turned out to be much broader than I ever thought.”

This corridor was going to be a way that many Western utilities were going to ship excess power to Los Angeles and would be an inducement for construction of additional utilities, Berman said.

Proponents of the measure had maintained that construction of the power plant outside Ely, Nev., would have generated jobs and tax benefits for hard-pressed White Pine County. The measure also included $5 million to purchase and preserve environmentally sensitive Nevada land and 1,000 of the 5,882 acres of bureau land.

Under the measure, Los Angeles would have purchased the 1,000 acres of bureau property and turned it over to Henderson, Nev., to compensate for the impact of the proposed transmission corridor on the city, located in Clark County in the southern tip of the state.

In a bid to appease environmentalists, Berman also required that any new power plant meet strict anti-pollution standards. Nevertheless, the lawmaker said Nevada media so adamantly opposed the measure that Reid could not support it “without putting his head in a noose.”

Much opposition stemmed from the original proposal to build a coal-burning plant, even though the DWP has more recently been considering a cleaner solar-powered or gas turbine facility, according to proponents.

The DWP must now consider other long-term options for obtaining electricity, Cotton said. Eventually, the Nevada plant could have supplied up to 30% of the city’s electricity after the year 2000. Cotton said there is no short-term energy shortage expected.

Berman, meanwhile, said that he intends to pursue acquisition of the Franklin and Corral canyon parcels--coveted by environmentalists as well as developers--again next year for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

“Whether they’ll be in another bill, I don’t know,” he said.