Nevada Weighs Plan to Quit Tahoe Planning Agency

Amid loud demonstrations by Lake Tahoe area property owners, Nevada state legislators Thursday began considering a measure that would force Nevada’s withdrawal from the bistate Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

Despite repeated admonitions by Assemblyman Louis Bergevin (R-Gardnerville), chairman of the Assembly Government Affairs Committee, members in the audience continued to interrupt the hearing.

The planning agency was created in 1969 through a compact between California and Nevada to manage economic development and preserve the environment at the border lake. The agency has been unable to reach final agreement on a master plan for development at the lake, causing a moratorium on all new construction in the Tahoe basin and raising the ire of landowners.

Californian Bill Hoffman told the committee that a lot he owns in Incline Village, Nev., is “right now worth about 10 cents” because he has been denied a building permit and has been offered “no compensation whatsoever” for his land.

“TRPA (the agency) considers property owners to be a damn nuisance,” Hoffman said, receiving applause. “What can you do with a residential lot that you can’t put a house on?”

But Tom Martens, executive director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, said if the bill is passed legislators will be “responsible for turning Lake Tahoe into a battleground for fights between California and Nevada, between gaming and non-gaming interests and between environmentalists and pro-development forces.”

Fritzi Huntington, president of the same group, said if Nevada withdraws from the regional agency, legislators will “kill the last hope of protection for Tahoe.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.) told a joint session of the Legislature that it is time to end the stalemate over the agency.