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COLUMBIA -- A House committee Thursday agreed to spend 80 percent of the state's $171.5 million surplus on building an access road to a new port terminal in North Charleston.

Under the spending plan, the rest of the 2005-06 surplus would buy new school buses ($22.9 million), upgrade airplane hangars at the former Donaldson Air Force Base in Greenville to keep Lockheed Martin from relocating ($3 million) and build a water plant for a regional water system serving six counties ($4 million).

State lawmakers allocated $3 million to Donaldson Center in an effort to keep Lockheed Martin Corp.'s 1,200 jobs at the industrial park in southern Greenville County.

Rep. Dan Cooper, a Piedmont Republican, said the expenditure was included in a joint resolution of the House Ways and Means Committee, which he chairs. Full House and Senate approval is needed before it goes to Gov. Mark Sanford, Cooper said.

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Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor based in Bethesda, Md., maintains, repairs, overhauls and upgrades military aircraft on a 150-acre airfield it leases at Donaldson Center. Recently, the company sought $3 million in improvements to the airfield during negotiations to renew its master lease for another five years.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have long said the state should fund the port access road but didn't know where to get the money. The 1.5-mile road would connect the terminal directly to Interstate 26, bypassing local roads and railroad tracks.

Legislators and business leaders say expanding the Charleston port is critical to the state's economy, including that of the Upstate, which is home to BMW and Michelin. Both are major users of the port, which supports 280,000 jobs and 700 companies statewide.

The port recently slipped from second-largest on the East Coast to fourth, surpassed by Norfolk, Va., and nearby Savannah, Ga., said Byron Miller, spokesman for the State Ports Authority.

The expansion should increase the port's capacity by 50 percent. Construction of the North Charleston terminal will cost about $600 million, but the ports authority is requesting taxpayer money only for the road, Miller said.

A resolution approved by the House budget-writing committee would fund half of the road's estimated $277 million price tag with money collected but not spent in the 2005-06 fiscal year. It would be the first of two payments, Cooper said.

Rep. Chip Limehouse, R-Charleston, questioned the project's cost. "It's a mile and a half; $140 million a mile sounds a bit pricey," he said.

Miller said bridge construction through wetlands and over existing roads is expensive, but he expects further review to bring the total cost down.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, said he wants to fund the road's full cost in one year, if the total price tag comes down to "a number the state could live with."

Though the road is meant to keep tractor-trailer traffic from congesting local streets between the port and I-26, it could worsen traffic on the interstate, said Tony Chapman, acting director of the state Transportation Department.

Widening I-26 for six miles near the port access road would cost about $250 million, he said.

The road received another push forward Thursday when the state Department of Health and Environmental Control approved permits. The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to make a final decision on a federal permit for the 286-acre terminal in April.