PLACER COUNTY

Friends of West Shore, Tahoe Sierra Clean Air Coalition (doing business as tahoecleanair.org), and North Tahoe Preservation Alliance filed a Writ of Mandate against Placer County on Dec. 17. It follows the county’s Nov. 18 vote to opt in to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA’s) amendments to the Tahoe Basin Area Plan (“TBAP”) Phase 2 Housing Amendments without preparing the legally required Environmental Impact Report (EIR).

The writ seeks judicial enforcement of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), arguing that Placer County’s reliance on a 2016 EIR and its use of an addendum process fail to account for significant new circumstances, environmental threats, and public safety concerns. The federally ratified Tahoe Compact requires Basin-wide equilibrium and safety thresholds. By ignoring cross-border evacuation impacts, the addendum violates Compact Articles V and VI.

The conservation groups contend Placer County’s actions violate CEQA and constitutional protections in multiple ways:

• Unlawful reliance on an EIR Addendum instead of a Subsequent EIR/EIS.
• Shielding of critical evacuation evidence and failing to consider new substantial evidence including the 2024 Ladris AI Contraflow Comparison commissioned by Placer County OES, and the October 2024 Independent Lake Tahoe Basin Wildfire Evacuation Analysis.
• Failure to analyze evacuation safety, particularly where increased density and building incentives foreseeably worsen gridlock during wildfire emergencies.
• Cross-jurisdictional evacuation impacts ignored for Nevada residents who must flee west on State Route 28, facing TRPA-mandated increased density in California town chokepoints.
• Reliance on outdated baselines from 2012 to 2016, ignoring climate-driven fire behavior and new modeling showing 5- to 13-plus hour delays in no-notice wildfire events. 
• Growth cap myth: Placer County along with the TRPA relied on conclusory assurances that “growth is capped” while simultaneously adopting policies that expand basin-wide development potential through transferable development rights, bonus units, conversions, and unit multipliers. This constitutes an inadequate project description, an unlawful omission of growth-inducing impacts, a failure to evaluate cumulative impacts, and an absence of substantial evidence requiring a subsequent EIR.

The conservation groups ask the court to order Placer County to prepare a Subsequent EIR, as required under Public Resources Code § 21166 and CEQA Guidelines § 15162 to ensure environmental, safety, and housing impacts are thoroughly analyzed before any TBAP amendments take effect.

~ Tahoe Sierra Clean Air Coalition press release