An increasingly confrontational President Bush on Friday vetoed a bill authorizing hundreds of water projects, including a project that would improve water service to about 14,000 people in north-central South Dakota.

Lawmakers say they have enough votes to easily override Bush's veto.

The bill, approved earlier by Congress, would authorize $65 million to expand the Mni Waste'/Tri-County Water System, which serves 17 communities on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation and in Dewey, Ziebach and eastern Meade counties. Actual funding would have to be approved later.

The project would allow the system to expand the main line from its intake in the Missouri River to Eagle Butte, according to Wayne Ducheneaux, executive director of the Cheyenne River Housing Authority.

The main-line expansion is crucial because the current 14-inch line doesn't deliver enough water to allow additional water hookups in Eagle Butte or the other communities, said Ducheneaux, who also heads the Mni Waste'/Tri-County Water System Task Force. The only way a new home can get water now is for someone else to drop off the system, Ducheneaux said. "We can't build housing until we get this water," he said.

The authorization would allow the system to build a 42-inch main line. Ducheneaux said, however, that a new main line would allow additional housing to come onto the system only in Eagle Butte and two nearby communities. He said another $300 million is needed to build distribution lines to the rest of the system in the far-flung rural region.

Mni Waste' is proposing to expand into the south half of Perkins County and farther into Meade County.

Ducheneaux praised Sens. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and John Thune, R-S.D., and Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., all of whom supported the authorization.

Congress appears likely to override Bush's veto, according to Johnson spokeswoman Julianne Fisher. She said the Senate approved the water-project bill by an 81 to 12 vote Sept. 24, and the House approved it by 381 votes in August.

She said the House could vote to override as early as next week, and she hoped the Senate could vote on the override before Thanksgiving.

Bush brushed aside significant objections from Capitol Hill, even from Republicans, in thwarting legislation that provides $23 billion for projects including repairing hurricane damage, restoring wetlands and preventing flooding in communities throughout the nation.

He has used the veto very sparingly for most of the time he has been in office but has made more use of it recently.

"When we override this irresponsible veto, perhaps the president will finally recognize that Congress is an equal branch of government and reconsider his many other reckless veto threats," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.

"More than two years after failing to respond to the devastation and destruction of Hurricane Katrina, he is refusing to fund important projects guided by the Army Corps of Engineers that are essential to protecting the people of the Gulf Coast region."

Bush objected to the $9 billion in projects added during negotiations between the House and Senate. He hoped that his action, even though it is sure not to hold, would cast him as a friend to conservatives who demand a tighter rein on federal spending.

But Bush never vetoed spending bills under the Republican Congress despite budgetary increases then, too. Attempting to demonstrate fiscal toughness now - in the seventh year of his presidency - carried the risk being criticized for doing too little, too late or as waging a transparently partisan attack against the Democrats who now run Capitol Hill.

The president took the gamble, making it part of a broader effort to more pointedly and frequently take on Democratic leaders.

The legislation originally approved by the Senate would have cost $14 billion, and the House version would have totaled $15 billion. Bush and a few Republicans complained that the final version was larded with unneeded pet projects pushed by individual lawmakers, sending the overall cost of the bill much higher.

"Only in Washington could the House take a $14 billion bill into a conference with the Senate's $15 billion bill and emerge with a compromise that costs taxpayers over $23 billion," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

She also said Bush vetoed the bill because it is "fiscally irresponsible" and falls outside the scope of the Army Corps' mission.

Critics noted that the bill piles more work on the Army Corps of Engineers, which already has a backlog of $58 billion worth of projects and an annual budget of only about $2 billion to address them.

If Bush is overridden, the measure would give a green light to projects in virtually every state. It only authorizes the projects; the actual funding must be approved separately.

The authorizations include:

-$3.6 billion for major wetlands and other coastal restoration, flood control and dredging projects for Louisiana, a state where coastal erosion and storms have resulted in the disappearance of huge areas of land

- Nearly $2 billion for the restoration of the Florida Everglades

- Nearly $2 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers to build seven new locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers

- $7 billion for various projects related to hurricane mitigation in Mississippi and Louisiana, including assuring 100-year levee protection in New Orleans;

- Hundreds of smaller dredging, wetlands restoration and flood control projects throughout the country

The Congressional Budget office says the bill includes projects that, if fully funded, would cost $11.2 billion over the next four years and $12 billion in the decade after that. The bill also calls for increased oversight of the Corps, requiring an outside review of water construction projects.