At the best of times it has been an uneasy alliance. At the worst of times it has been an all-out internal war: two states, four counties, one city, and an alphabet soup of federal and state agencies all crammed under the authority of one completely unique planning agency — the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
Today is the worst of times. Age-old controversies surrounding Lake Tahoe have been enflamed by a declining economy, planning processes that have become quagmires of controversy between environmental groups and business and property owners, and a host of politicians and Tahoe residents calling for the agency’s dissolution.
At stake is the face of Tahoe’s future — projects that seek to remake Tahoe’s obsolete and crumbling casino past and 1960s development patterns. But an ocean of agencies, environmental groups, neighborhood alliances, and business groups are all fighting tooth and nail to imprint their will on tomorrow’s Lake Tahoe.
The result? Bureaucratic gridlock. Litigation. Political maneuvering. Outright hostility.
With an embattled Shorezone Plan under court appeal, a Regional Plan years in the making that is contested across the Basin, and some of the biggest development decisions coming up for approval, the TRPA is in the middle of one of the deepest controversies in its history. The long-simmering feuds and frustrations are threatening to rip apart the bistate agency tasked with Lake Tahoe’s environmental preservation.
The deep divides that are splitting the agency come down to more than Nevada’s recent effort to withdraw from the bistate compact in a bill that agency officials and board members see as both serious and indicative of a strong antipathy toward the agency across Nevada. The agency’s potentially life-threatening troubles can be traced back to the fact that the disparate forces that the organization is tasked with bringing together are uncompromising, deeply divided, and unable to work together. The result has been a vice-like governmental gridlock in the Lake Tahoe Basin,
The pressure could either remake the agency into a leader of Lake Tahoe’s 21st-century future, or dissolve it, leaving California and Nevada to fend for themselves.
To survive, the agency will have to do what today looks nearly impossible — broker middle ground between varying groups that in the recent past have resorted to hard-line opposition and litigation rather than compromise.
A bill that started a movement
When John Lee, a Las Vegas Democrat, recently introduced a bill calling for the dissolution of the TRPA, it was really nothing out of the ordinary in the long history of the agency. Six other times, Nevada has threatened to pull out of the agency, and six other times that effort has stalled in the Nevada legislature.
But this time, the bill had support from both political parties and both Southern and Northern Nevada. And soon support for the bill began to snowball outside of the Nevada capital. The South Lake Tahoe City Council voted to support the bill, and U.S. Congressman Tom McClintock and California Senator Ted Gaines both backed the bill.
While agency officials are taking the bill very seriously, there are significant questions about whether the legislation has enough support within the legislature to be enacted. But as support for the TRPA’s dissolution mounts, the likelihood of the bill’s passage, whether in its current form or amended, rises.
State vs. state
Historically, much of the TRPA’s controversy has been a product of the simple fact that two states with differing cultures, political proclivities, and outlooks on private property rights have been wedded in the arranged marriage of the TRPA.
The sniping across state lines dates back to the pre-1980-compact days when Nevada approved a string of lakefront high-rise casinos, and disapproving California leaders sued Nevada casino projects and even pulled out of the agency to form the California Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
More recently, the interstate feud has been fueled by actions like the California attorney general litigating Crystal Bay casino plans, the consequences of which extend into today as the Boulder Bay project was approved only after sorting out historic legal agreements negotiated by the attorney general.
TRPA board member Larry Sevison said the antipathy between the states is fueled by California’s meddling, but also draws from deep resentments and differing political philosophies between the states. Nevada, crushed by the real estate collapse and increasingly crippled by a decline in gambling revenue, doesn’t have to look further than the new crop of Indian casinos springing up between California urban centers and the gaming meccas of Reno and Las Vegas to rekindle the interstate anger.
‘I don’t think Nevada is against the TRPA as much as they are against California stepping in,’ said Sevison.
The League vs. the TRPA
It might be a sign of the times that both executive directors of the TRPA and the League to Save Lake Tahoe are seasoned attorneys.
Whether you think of the League to Save Lake Tahoe as a skilled environmental defender or as an obstructionist organization bent on blocking all development — and the league is viewed both ways within the Basin — one thing has become clear: Tahoe’s oldest environmental group is not afraid to call in the lawyers when it disagrees with a TRPA decision.
In fact, the league has sued the TRPA so frequently in the recent past — including litigation against the Sierra Colina project in South Lake Tahoe and the agency’s Shorezone Plan — that the threat of litigation hangs over any decision that the league disagrees with.
Given the litigious history between the TRPA and the league, it’s easy to see why much of the anger over the TRPA’s governmental gridlock is often also an indictment of the League to Save Lake Tahoe.
Recently, one of the league’s fiercest critics, South Lake Tahoe City Council member and new TRPA board member Claire Fortier, penned a column published on Laketahoenews.net that outlined how the league’s detractors see the nonprofit groups — as a well-funded, Bay Area second homeowner–dominated, litigious group bent on the preservation of Tahoe’s rural character at all costs.
In the column, entitled ‘Keep Tahoe Blue-blooded,’ Fortier said that ‘in the past few weeks, the league has shown its true colors as an obstructionist organization bent on stopping any change at the lake, even change for the environmental good … But it’s time to call the league on its misguided efforts. Is the league’s real mission to save Lake Tahoe or save the Tahoe of 50 years ago? Is the league, which is primarily comprised of wealthy second homeowners from San Francisco, really keeping Tahoe blue or just keeping Tahoe blue blood?’
The column highlights a growing outrage with the League to Save Lake Tahoe, whose recent litigation has stopped a workforce housing project in South Lake Tahoe called Sierra Colina and the TRPA’s Shorezone Plan, which incorporated years of public comment and planning. And the lawsuits that are filed are just one obstacle — the threat of litigation, whether it materializes or not, also hangs over all controversial efforts, like the agency’s regional plan and the recent Boulder Bay approval.
‘There is an objective that they have ‘let’s keep Tahoe a quiet, sleepy little burg’ and I am not opposed to that,’ said Sevison, who represents Placer County on the TRPA board. ‘But they just keep raising the bar and people can’t get over it.’
Sevison has sat on the TRPA board at various times since the ’80s, and has seen and experienced the frustration when a decade of planning gets washed away by a court decision.
‘[The Shorezone litigation] is kind of disheartening because I sat on that Shorezone committee for 12 years,’ said Sevison, laughing. ‘We came back with a plan that was pretty restrictive and even that was not good enough.’
Sevison said the Boulder Bay and Homewood redevelopment projects are very critical for the Tahoe Basin. If one or both of them are stopped by litigation, he thinks the days of private property owners proposing redevelopment projects in the Basin will end.
‘If one or both of those fail I think it will be the last private redevelopment projects we will ever see,’ said Sevison. ‘[As a developer] you know you can’t get through the process.’
Rochelle Nason, the League to Save Lake Tahoe’s executive director, says the league simply ensures that projects comply with laws that were created to safeguard Lake Tahoe’s environmental health.
‘There has been litigation because the TRPA has been ignoring laws that protect lake Tahoe, specifically in the areas of watershed protection and the impacts of increased motor boating that is contemplated,’ said Nason. ‘The tension at Lake Tahoe is very high right now. For over 50 years the League to Save Lake Tahoe has tried to assure that laws and plans protecting the Lake Tahoe Basin are effective. The only actions we would obstruct are illegal actions that threaten the environment of the Lake Tahoe Basin.’
But Joanne Marchetta, executive director of the TRPA, said that she feels that leftover sentiments from old Basin planning battles — specifically the 1970s fight over rampant casino development — are still dominating today’s discussion.
‘The environmental organizations are still looking back and reacting, and we are challenging them to look at new ideas and new solutions,’ said Marchetta.
The Future of the TRPA
If the Nevada bill calling for the TRPA dissolution passes, the Tahoe Basin will be governed by two state agencies just as it was before the 1969 formation of the TRPA and at differing times in the 1970s when the states went their separate ways. The California Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and the Nevada Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (which already exists but serves mainly as a casino floor area regulator) would govern each state’s land within the Basin.
Much of the federal funding — from forest health to transportation funding — would also likely evaporate.
Nason said the dissolution of the TRPA would ‘sacrifice the lake for the benefit of one project’ and would be ‘a drastic action that could be so damaging for Lake Tahoe.’
Marchetta is calling for a summit between the governors of California and Nevada to help chart a direction for Lake Tahoe.
‘It is time for the two states to come together and not split apart. I think we can look at the leadership of the two states’ governor’s offices,’ said Marchetta. ‘I believe the TRPA will emerge as a stronger, more streamlined, more efficient, more focused organization and we will therefore be more effective in delivering environmental gains that will be consistent with the environmental and social needs of communities around the Basin.’
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