Progress at Lake Tahoe

There is hope that the two-year-old legal impasse over development in the Lake Tahoe Basin may be broken soon.

Since late last summer more than 20 governments and organizations with an interest in the bi-state Sierra lake region have been negotiating proposed changes in the Tahoe regional plan. If the consensus process is successful, a building moratorium in the basin can be lifted under development controls agreeable to the California-Nevada Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, landowners, environmental groups, local governments and other interested parties.

The consensus-building process was proposed last August by Bill Morgan, the new executive director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and formerly a veteran Forest Service official at Lake Tahoe. The meetings started not long after a federal appeals court upheld a lawsuit challenging the adequacy of the 20-year Tahoe regional plan. The suit was brought by the League to Save Lake Tahoe and the California attorney general’s office. Previous attempts by the plaintiffs and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency to negotiate an out-of-court settlement had failed.

Since August the Tahoe interests have met with a professional facilitator in an effort to work out ground rules under which limited construction in the Tahoe basin could resume with minimum effects on the environment. General agreement has been reached in two key areas--commercial development and the classification of vacant lots for future home construction. Many details still must be resolved.

It is not likely, of course, that such progress could have been made without the leverage of the lawsuit. Whatever the motivation, we applaud the progress that has been made and urge the parties to stick with the process until a successful conclusion is achieved.