A provision in the 1,055-page energy measure would make U.S. taxpayers pay the interest on as much as $500 million of state-issued ``forestry conservation bonds'' to be used for the potential purchase of at least 40,000 acres of Plum Creek timberlands. Seattle-based Plum Creek is the biggest private landowner in Montana.
Federal taxpayers would pay as much as $161 million to help the state of Montana compete with developers in the potential sale of land near population centers such as Missoula.
The provision ``aims to protect pristine lands from ever being flipped by developers into condos and strip malls,'' said Carol Guthrie, a spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee. That panel's chairman, Democrat Max Baucus, is from Montana and helped write the energy bill.
House Republicans called the provision a special-interest clause, or earmark, which Democrats said they would limit when they took control of Congress in January.
The legislation ``can only possibly benefit one landowner in the U.S.,'' Republican Representative Jim McCrery of Louisiana told reporters. ``These are the kinds of things that are hatched in secrecy.''
