ANCHORAGE - The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, voting largely along party lines, approved legislation Wednesday that would add at least 250,000 acres to the University of Alaska's land endowment.
The legislation was sponsored by Sen. Frank Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and the panel's chairman. He said the bill is intended to be fair to the university, which he said was denied more than half of its land grant entitlement under federal law.
The land would be available for the university to develop into a source of income.
Murkowski has tried in two previous congressional sessions to pass similar legislation, but it has never made it out of the Senate. Despite continuing modification to appease critics, the bill is strongly opposed by the Clinton administration and environmental groups.
The current legislation would require the university to surrender property it owns in national parks in the state, including its claim to what some say is the world's largest nickel deposit under Brady Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park.
The committee approved two other Alaska-related bills Wednesday. One calls for a study of measures to recover the federal government's cost of rescuing climbers from Mount McKinley in Denali National Park. The other would establish a program for the Interior Department to hire Natives for work in Western Alaska national parks.
