The legislation also would strengthen protections of scenic rivers, including eight in California that stretch from the upper Owens River in the eastern Sierra to Piru Creek in Los Angeles County.
In addition, the bill would add about 8,400 acres to the 272,000-acre Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument near Palm Springs, and order a study on whether the World War II Japanese American internment camp at Tule Lake should be part of the national park system.
"We're ecstatic," said Sam Goldman, California wilderness coordinator at the Wilderness Society.
The bill brought together members of opposing parties who were eager to trumpet their conservation efforts and water projects.
Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon of Santa Clarita, a conservative Republican who worked with liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to push for the wilderness designation in the Eastern Sierra and San Gabriel Mountains, alluded to his unusual situation.
"We have some people who used to be my friends who are not happy with me, and we have some people who used to hate me who now think I'm great," he said. Showing pictures of mountains and rivers in his district, he added: "Places like this are treasures that we should try to preserve."
But the measure drew opposition from a number of congressional Republicans and business and property-rights groups, who attacked it as a land grab that would close off public land to energy production.
"If Congress and the administration are serious about jump-starting our economy, they cannot limit responsible American energy production of any kind, including oil and natural gas," said Barry Russell, president and chief executive of the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America.
The $88 million for the San Joaquin River is aimed at ending one of California's legendary water fights.
So much of the river is diverted to irrigate farmland on the east side of the agriculture-rich San Joaquin Valley that about 60 miles of it has turned into a bed of dust. Its lower reach is so polluted with runoff and agricultural drainage that it is known as "the lower colon of California."
A chinook salmon run that once was one of the West Coast's most bountiful was wiped out after Friant Dam was built in the 1940s and most of the river's Sierra-fed flow was sent into two giant irrigation canals.
