RENO, Nev. (AP) — The U.S. Postal Service announced Tuesday that it is abandoning a plan to reroute mail delivery in the Reno area to Sacramento, a plan that had sparked uproar among northern Nevada residents who feared it would delay mail delivery and jeopardize the timely arrival of absentee ballots.

The USPS said in a statement that it has identified “improved efficiencies” that would allow it to continue processing individual mail items at its existing Reno post office, but it does not expect the revised strategy to impact Reno postal workers.

The latest change in plans is still subject to the formal filing of approval applications with the Postal Regulatory Commission, which the service plans to submit next month, the service said.

Senator Jacky Rosen said this must mean the end of “this misguided Washington plan.”

“The announcement that this widely opposed transfer of local mail processing operations will no longer occur is a major victory for our seniors, veterans and all the people of Northern Nevada who depend on timely mail delivery,” Rosen said.

Rosen, a Democrat running for re-election against Republican Sam Brown in one of the most hotly contested Senate races in the country, took the lead in a bipartisan effort to fight the original plan earlier this year. She was joined by fellow Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Republican Rep. Mark Amodei and Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.

Lombardo said it was “a huge, bipartisan victory for Nevada.” In a statement on social media, he said he was “grateful to have worked alongside Rosen, Cortez Masto and Amodei” to protect Nevadans “from the misguided bureaucracy in Washington DC.”

Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, the state’s top election official, had warned that moving the facility could slow down the processing of mail-in ballots. “It has the potential to disenfranchise thousands of Nevada voters and would undoubtedly affect the election results in Nevada.”

Most Nevadans voted by mail in the 2022 general election and this year’s statewide primary in June – 51% in November 2022 and 65% in the primary two months ago.

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Postmaster General Louis DeJoy had touted the original plan to downsize the post office — expected to be implemented next year — as a necessary cost-cutting measure. It faced fierce opposition in Nevada because it would have meant that all mail from the Reno area would have had to go through Sacramento before reaching its final destination — even from one side of the city to the other.

Lawmakers warned that even in the best weather, there could be traffic delays in mail delivery during the 260-mile round-trip journey on Interstate 80 over the top of the Sierra Nevada between Reno and Sacramento.

And during severe winter weather, which can begin as early as fall and last until late spring, the highway in the mountains is typically closed several times a year due to heavy snowfall.

Rosen and Amodei introduced a bill in Congress in March to block the processing delay after a blizzard dumped up to 10 feet of snow on the mountains earlier that month.

The service said in a statement on Tuesday that further details would be provided following a pre-submission meeting with the Postal Regulatory Commission on September 5 to “discuss the proposal and seek feedback from stakeholders with a view to a subsequent submission” to seek a formal opinion from the commission.

“If the settlement process is successful, there will be no changes to the location for canceling certain mail items in Reno,” it said. “Put simply, outbound individual mail items will continue to be processed at the current location.”

Scott Sonner, The Associated Press