BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Congressional Republicans say their plan to sell potentially hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land will generate revenue and ease growth pressures in some Western cities.

Without clear details on how it will work, skeptics worry it could be a giveaway for developers and mining companies and do little to ease the region’s housing crisis.

Legislation passed by the House Natural Resources Committee last week includes about 460,000 acres in Nevada and Utah to be sold or transferred to local governments or private entities.

The majority of land in the House provision is in Nevada, including the counties that encompass Reno, Las Vegas and the fast-growing city of Fernley, according to maps released by the measure’s sponsors, Republican Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah.

Fernley City Manager Benjamin Marchant said the opportunity to buy 12,000 acres of federal land at the edge of the community was “good news.” The city size tripled since its incorporation in 2001 and is expected to double again over the next decade, he said.

There is hope to emerge as a technology hub, but Fernley needs space to grow.

“We can’t even talk about projects when it’s federal land,” Marchant said. “We can’t sell what we don’t own and this is the first step.”

Other parcels to be sold are farther from developed areas. They include sites bordering Zion National Park and tribal lands such as the Paiute Indian Tribe reservation in Utah and the Pyramid Lake Paiute reservation in Nevada.

“That means the tribe can’t grow,” said Mathilda Miller with Native Voters Alliance Nevada, an advocacy group for the state’s tribes that opposes the sales. “They can’t reclaim the land that was stolen from their tribe, and it brings development right up to their doorstep.”

About 100,000 acres in western Nevada’s rural Pershing County could be sold to private companies with mining claims or mining infrastructure, according to Amodei’s office. The legislation also requires federal parcels in that area to be exchanged for an equal amount of nonfederal land.

Many of the communities near sale locations share a common theme: Their expansion is hemmed in by federal property, which makes up 80 percent of the land in Nevada and 63 percent in Utah. Some states in the Midwest and East have 1 percent or less federal land by comparison.

Public parcels often are interspersed with private holdings in a “checkerboard” fashion that further complicates development efforts.

Housing advocates caution that federal land is not universally suitable for affordable housing. Generally, the farther away the land is from cities and towns the more infrastructure is required, such as roads, sewage and public transportation.

“It’s a costly way to go because of the infrastructure needs, because of the time it will take,” said Vicki Been of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University. “I’m not saying that there’s no place on federal lands that would make sense, but one has to really look carefully.”

The proposal seeks to identify suitable lands in coordination with local municipalities. That has left some concerned there aren’t enough assurances that the land, or enough land, will end up going to affordable housing.

“The devil’s in the details,” said Tara Rollins, executive director of the Utah Housing Coalition. “It could just be a land grab. There just needs to be a lot of checks and balances.”

Republican officials in Utah last year filed a lawsuit seeking to take over huge swathes of federal land in the state, but they were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. Twelve other states backed Utah’s bid.