The 106th Congress will not be known for its productivity, but it did begin an important bipartisan agreement in the House called the Conservation and Reinvestment Act that will help states set aside land, build parks, restore historic places and support wildlife programs. And the best part is that it will not cost taxpayers a penny.

With the Land and Water Conservation Fund ($900 million) and a new program called Coastal Impact Assistance ($1 billion) as its centerpieces, the act uses approximately $2.8 billion of the $4 billion that annually comes from revenues generated by oil and gas assets off the outer continental shelf. There was strong sentiment going into the congressional session that states would be again be eligible for this money after years of Congress largely using it to reduce the federal deficit. The question was whose version of the funding package for these environmental programs would prevail.

The answer was found not long ago in a compromise between sponsors of competing measures. Alaska Republican Don Young and California Democrat George Miller worked together to produce a bill that most advocates can support. In addition to the LWCF and Coastal Impact money, the act would fund support programs for wildlife conservation, urban parks and recreation areas, conservation easements and species recovery and federal and Indian land restoration. Mainers are most familiar with LWCF, which has been around since 1964, although they might not know it.

LWCF has helped fund thousands of projects in hundreds of Maine communities. Ball fields and swimming pools, nature trails and tennis courts, Acadia National Park, The Allagash Wilderness Waterway, Lake Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge, Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge, Petit Manan National Wildlife Refuge and dozens of state parks are among the beneficiaries of more than $104 million in LWCF funds over the years. Unfortunately, Congress for the last five years had failed to fund the state portion of the LWCF, leaving a lot of worthy Maine projects without money.

That could change now under the Young-Miller proposal, which appears to have enough votes to pass the full House, perhaps as early as next March. The count in the Senate in closer, but Maine’s senators would serve the state well by supporting Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s version of act.

Anyone who cherishes the outdoors — whether inner-city park or along the most remote section of the Allagash — should find much to value in this legislation. All it needs now is Senate support