As the federal government slashes spending and cuts departments and jobs, Lake Tahoe faces uncertainty and a looming fire season. The risk to the region has been exacerbated by Congress’ failure to allocate future funding to the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act.
“[Lake Tahoe is] 80% managed and owned by the federal government, so when things happen as quickly as they are happening at the federal level, we feel that,” said Noa Banayan, government affairs manager at the League to Save Lake Tahoe. She is also a member of Team Tahoe, a group of advocates from the region that visits the nation’s capital annually to lobby for and report about the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act.
Historically, Lake Tahoe, being the national jewel that it is, has received significant federal support, including funding for invasive species prevention, transportation, and forest health. In 2000 the landmark bipartisan Lake Tahoe Restoration Act was signed into law, detailing its allotment of $300 million over the course of 10 years for environmental restoration. In 2016, the act was renewed for another 10 years and last fall, renewed again through 2034. However, as the delegation of Tahoe representatives discovered during a March trip to Washington, D.C., this federal money is no longer secure.
While the Restoration Act calls for a certain amount of money to be funneled to Tahoe projects, Congress provides the actual budget allocations. When legislators couldn’t reach an agreement on the 2025 fiscal year budget, they passed a continuing resolution, signed by the president on March 15, to avoid a government shutdown. The resolution didn’t adopt the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act’s budget and removed language about Tahoe. Though it continued federal funding levels from the previous fiscal year and allocated $1.1 billion to the Department of the Interior for wildland fire management and $3.2 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental programs and management, the resolution’s report language doesn’t name directly the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act. Nor does it include amounts of money to be allocated for various conservation efforts in the Tahoe area. This unallocated funding could be up for grabs for other governmental initiatives unrelated to Tahoe.
“In other words, the money could go anywhere,” said Team Tahoe member Steve Teshara, founder of Sustainable Community Advocates. “It doesn’t have to go to Tahoe, it doesn’t have to be used for the things that are called for in the Restoration Act. So, it’s like free money for somebody — the Forest Service, or the administration could use it for anything that they want.”
It’s a sharp departure from past action. “Typically, a continuing resolution would continue the existing funding levels — funding levels from the previous fiscal year. And all of the report language associated with those appropriations would come along with the continuing resolution,” Teshara said. “That is not the case this time, which is just part of the chaos that we see coming out of Washington.”
Teshara reports that the mood on Capitol Hill is that of slashing spending at all costs and that even the courts are struggling to uphold governmental checks and balances.
“What we were told is, ‘You may or may not get the money that was in there in the last budget that you got. You may or may not get it in fiscal year 2025,’” Teshara said. “In all the years that I’ve been going back to Washington for Lake Tahoe, I don’t recall such a big pivot away from how the system has worked. And it’s because the people who are in charge apparently don’t want the system to work.”
This suspension of funding is part of the broader cuts and funding freezes happening around the country, which is throwing many projects in the region into a tailspin, including delays and potential indefinite postponement of fuels reduction and watershed restoration projects.
“There are expectations and plans and projects that require these types of funding and when they aren’t clear if they’re going to get that or get reimbursed for projects that are underway, that’s really difficult, especially in a place like Tahoe that has a pretty short project and infrastructure season,” Banayan said. “We can’t build trails in the winter, and we can’t do forest thinning if there’s already a wildfire happening.”
The impacts are rippling out to affect non-federal agencies. Conservation organizations such as the California Tahoe Conservancy work in collaboration with the Forest Service to protect land due to the overlapping nature of regional land ownership.
The conservancy manages about 4,700 properties, over 6,600 acres of land total, throughout California and has received funding from the Restoration Act. Conservancy Director of Natural Resources Erin Ernst said Basin partners leverage federal, state, local, and private funding for conservation and fire mitigation work.
“In the Basin, there’s a ton of coordination, especially around forestry work for the Tahoe Fire and Fuels team. And that’s 21 different agencies including federal agencies that are part of that,” Ernst said. “And that’s how the Basin has operated for almost two decades now. And that’s around funding, around prioritization of projects because of how the agencies cover different areas that are so close together, there has to be that tight amount of coordination.”
Without certain federal funding, a key piece of the puzzle is off the table. Ernst said uncertainty about Restoration Act funds means Basin partners will have to prioritize projects, leaving some off the schedule.
Banayan said that if forest health projects can’t be carried out before fire season, there could be devastating consequences for the region. She emphasized that if funding pauses continue, Tahoe’s dependence on federal staffing and funds will be felt when peak visitation season arrives in the summer — with an influx of aquatic invasive species, fire, and trash. Banayan noted that paused funds could leave bathrooms without maintenance, saying this would be a “scary” thought come Fourth of July.
As funding uncertainty prevails, so does the precarious state of Tahoe’s public lands. Teshara said the situation will only keep declining if people don’t speak up.
