SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - The chairman of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said Thursday he's confident Congress will give the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System between $25 million and $30 million for the next budget year even though the president asked for no funding.

The subcommittee recommended the higher figure for the next fiscal year's funding level. A House panel recommended $25 million.

Thursday afternoon, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed the 2009 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, which contains the Lewis and Clark money, and sent it on to the full Senate.

"Today's action by the Appropriations Committe will insure that the project stays on track to deliver drinking water to Sioux Falls by 2012," said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D.

The goal is to get the Senate number, Dorgan said. "I'm confident that we will end up with something very close or perhaps identical to these numbers," he said.

Asked whether he was uncertain, given that a new president will take office in January, Johnson said, "There's some uncertainty, but you can't do worse than zero."

Lewis and Clark is a partnership of 15 cities and five rural water districts in South Dakota, Iowa and southwestern Minnesota that would get treated water from wells near the Missouri River through 337 miles of underground pipe. The project is under construction.

Johnson said Lewis and Clark will serve more than 200,000 people in the three states.

The $537 million project got almost $27 million for this fiscal year after Bush proposed $15 million. He left the project out of the spending outline for the 2009 budget year starting Oct. 1.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said Lewis and Clark supporters work hard to get as much federal funding as possible every year.

"It generally ends up somewhere in between, and the Senate number is traditionally higher than the House number, and we try and lift it closer to the Senate number," he said.

But Thune said he doesn't think very many appropriation bills will move across the Senate floor the rest of the year. What's more likely is a continuing resolution or omnibus appropriation bill, he said.

Thune said he thinks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid want to pass a continuing resolution that takes them into next year because they assume they'll have a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.