At the urging of Nevada's congressional delegation, Congress passed the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act in 1998. It's been tweaked a few times since, but essentially calls for the Bureau of Land Management to sell off various federal lands in Southern Nevada, with some of the proceeds reverting to local governments and education.

The land sales have raised billions of dollars.

With that kind of money at stake, it's not surprising that our delegation over the past year had to fight off efforts by the Bush administration to divert a portion of the cash to the federal Treasury.

And now, other states are looking to copy the Southern Nevada model.

For example, in Utah, officials in Washington County -- home to booming St. George -- are pushing a federal law that would mandate that the BLM sell 25,000 acres, with the money going to county agencies and various local conservation projects. A portion of the funds would help pay for a water pipeline from Lake Powell.

Predictably, environmentalists are not happy with the prospect of other jurisdictions emulating the Southern Nevada model.

"As far as wilderness is concerned, this is a miserable piece of legislation," Scott Groene, an executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, told the Los Angeles Times.

In fact, the federal government owns far too much land -- particularly in the West -- and the more put into private hands, the better.

The only problem with the Southern Nevada approach is that a certain percentage of the money raised by federal land sales in Clark County must be set aside for Washington to buy more "environmentally sensitive" land elsewhere -- an effort intended to ensure that the federal real estate portfolio doesn't shrink, thus putting half the BLM work force in the unemployment line.

Other than that, however, the move by states and local governments to hasten the disposal of Washington's vast land holdings near developing Western communities is long overdue.