Recently departed Colorado lawmakers have their fingerprints on dozens of special spending earmarks contained in a $410 billion omnibus spending plan that Congress begins considering this week.

The legislation, a collection of fiscal year 2009 appropriations bills that never got finished in the last congressional session, contains millions of dollars for schools, hospitals, water projects, agriculture programs and other federal spending in the state.

The money is separate from the $787 billion federal stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama last week in Denver.

Many of the set-asides were initially requested by now-retired Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican, and former Sen. Ken Salazar, who now serves as Interior secretary. And retired Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Littleton Republican, still has his name attached to several proposed earmarks.

There's some irony in one of Allard's proposed earmarks: $1 million in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) budget set aside for "shipment and storage of oil shale core samples."

In the Senate, Allard and Salazar often clashed over how fast to move forward with commercial oil shale leasing in the state, and Salazar now oversees the BLM's management of research and development programs.

Allard and Salazar teamed up to request dozens of proposed earmarks, such as $36,000 to fight chronic wasting disease in the state; $500,000 to build a regional crime lab in northern Colorado; agricultural research projects such as $214,000 for studying Russian wheat aphids; $2.5 million for a "forest legacy program" at Snow Mountain Ranch; and millions of dollars in water project maintenance.

Meanwhile, in the Department of Energy, they both requested more than $1.4 million of research into underground carbon sequestration projects, which would take carbon out of the atmosphere.

And they teamed with Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Golden, in requesting $475,750 for a Smart-Grid Integration Lab in Colorado, and $237,500 for the Sustainable Biofuels Development Center at Colorado State University.

The legislation, which the U.S. House of Representatives considers this week, includes money in 10 different topic areas, from agriculture to homeland security. Defense spending was handled separately.

The current version would set aside $2.2 million for the BLM to acquire land for an Arkansas River Special Recreation Management area in Colorado. It also would include eight large grants to state colleges and universities, such as $381,000 for Adams State College facilities, and at least six grants to Colorado hospitals.