Unusual Alliance Plans Tahoe Face Lift

It is one of America’s great fading beauty spots. But Lake Tahoe is also the object of a billion-dollar face lift that has caught the attention of President Clinton, who is coming here this weekend to showcase the make-over as an example of how to restore America’s tarnished natural treasures.

For Lake Tahoe, the White House interest offers the best hope of paying for the rehabilitation of a place Mark Twain once described as “the fairest picture the whole Earth affords.”

Today, scientists say the lake, one of the deepest and bluest on Earth, has less than 30 years before pollution turns it a lusterless gray-green.

Forest experts, meanwhile, hold their breath as up to 300,000 visitors a day crowd into a mountain valley where some of the most flammable timber in the West could kindle a firestorm, but which has only a few exits.

Yet despite Tahoe’s blemishes, its shopworn casinos and strip of $20-a-night motels, the area reflects a new civic consciousness in the West--expressed by a coalition of environmentalists, entertainment magnates, ski resort owners and real estate developers--about the importance of the environment to the health of the economy.

“The Tahoe consensus offers the case in point that we do not have a conflict between a strong economy and a healthy environment,” said Carol Browner, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and one of several administration officials to hold workshops here in preparation for Clinton’s visit.

For the president, who has been roughed up often over Western environmental issues, Lake Tahoe offers an opportunity to promote conservation policies before a largely receptive audience.

The Tahoe restoration “represents the kind of conflict-free, collaborative approach to environmental problems that Clinton likes to reward,” an administration spokesman said.

So far, the White House hasn’t said how big the reward will be. But the question of money hangs over a community that cannot pay for the rehabilitation itself and where new environmental regulations, though broadly accepted, have prompted lawsuits and one outburst of lethal violence.

Some residents fear that the beautification campaign, which would tear down the budget motels and ban motorized water skis, is a disguised attempt to turn an affordable vacation area into another high-end destination. Others fear they will have to bear too much of the cost.

“We are still mostly a blue-collar community, and there is no way we can pay for all of the pollution control and forest restoration that needs to be done,” said Tom Davis, the mayor of South Lake Tahoe, the largest community on the 192-square-mile lake.

The federal government owns about 80% of the land around the lake, and many people blame the deterioration of the Tahoe basin on Washington’s tolerance of logging and building practices that eroded mountainsides and destroyed the apron of wetlands that used to filter out much of the pollution that now pours into the lake.

California Gov. Pete Wilson, speaking here this week, challenged the Clinton administration to put up or shut up.

Without a commitment of several hundred million dollars, Wilson said, the president’s visit won’t amount to more than “a one-day photo op.”

“What we do not need is new organizational plans or structures,” Wilson said. “What we do need is the will and the resources to make sure that the ones we have in place will actually work.”

Appearing beside Nevada Gov. Bob Miller, Wilson pointed out that the two states have contributed more than $200 million to environmental improvements in the 500-square-mile basin, about two-thirds of which is in California, the rest in Nevada.

But Clinton is being warmly welcomed by the coalition of civic leaders campaigning to save Lake Tahoe. Some worry about losing market share to Las Vegas or Reno. Some crave the snob appeal of Aspen or Vail. Others, like bicoastal casino czar Steve Wynn, who owns a lakeside estate, say they simply want a quiet place in the country.

All are united, though, in the belief that the basin’s natural attractions--especially the sapphire lake--are their most valuable assets. And most are willing to pay a steep price to undo the damage done over the past century by excessive logging and livestock grazing, slapdash construction, misplaced development, careless recreation and traffic congestion.

“What you are doing here puts you ahead of any other part of the country,” Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said at one of the workshops convened by the administration before the president’s visit. “There is much to learn from what you are doing here. The rest of the country is watching.”

The Tahoe consensus came about only after the local economy began suffering a sharp decline in the late 1980s.

“We woke up to the reality that a 35% occupancy rate might have something to do with the run-down condition of the place,” said Stan Hanson, owner of Heavenly Valley, the basin’s largest ski resort. “The one thing we had that many of our competitors lacked was a remarkable setting, and we were neglecting the hell out of it.”

For Hanson and other local leaders, the challenge is to pay for the make-over of a 1950s vintage vacation community whose builders paid little heed to its appearance or to its impact on the lake and surrounding landscape.

In the coming year, rows of dormitory-style motels are slated to come down in South Lake Tahoe. In their place, local planners are calling for a new look, “rustic alpine elegance,” inspired by the national park architecture of hotels like Yosemite’s rock-and-timber Ahwahnee.

To guard against sprawl, officials have decreed that for every new hotel room built, at least one old one must come down. And the amount of ground covered by building in South Lake Tahoe is supposed to shrink by nearly 30%.

But most of Tahoe’s rehabilitation involves pruning 200,000 acres of forest and curbing the flow of 22 million pounds of sediment that discolors the lake each year.

Along with air pollution, the sediment deposits a potent combination of phosphorous and nitrogen that stimulates the rapid growth of algae on the 1,600-foot-deep lake.

Much of the $1 billion will go toward a massive public works project to curb the erosion. Hillside revegetation, retaining walls, gutters, grease traps and storm-water collection systems are being installed along hundreds of miles of roads. It is also hoped that public transit--shuttle buses and gondolas--will reduce the use of cars.

In addition, officials are restoring hundreds of miles of stream beds, meadows and wetlands that acted as filters for much of the polluted runoff before it reached the lake.

But the effort has meant financial sacrifices that not everyone here has suffered silently.

Tahoe-area residents are paying fees 30% to 40% higher than neighboring counties to export all of the locally generated sewage out of the basin.

Several hundred residential property owners are suing the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, complaining that environmental restrictions have deprived them of the use of their property. In a case still active, Bernadine Suitum, an 82-year-old widow, has fought the agency all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to win the right to build on her small lot.

Another lawsuit stems from the pending ban on the noisy engines that power most of the 200 motorized water skis on the lake. Led by Wynn, the campaign has prompted charges of elitism by locals who say that the burdens of the cleanup are falling hardest on people least able to afford it--from lot owners like Suitum to the small businesses that rent out the skis.

“Unfortunately, we’re beginning to develop class tensions here,” said Larry Hoffman, a Tahoe City lawyer who represents both the property owners and the water ski interests.

“Regulations are driving up the costs of living and doing business for a lot of working people. It’s a shame because, unlike a lot of resort communities, Lake Tahoe has always been affordable for average families.”

In February, the tension erupted in violence when Joe Thiemann, a tour boat operator with a long history of citations for violating environmental regulations, loaded up his car with guns and went after one of his accusers, a local marina operator. In a struggle, Thiemann’s pistol misfired and he was shot to death by a third man, who intervened on behalf of the marina owner.

“I don’t think people see Joe Thiemann as symptomatic of anything. But a tragedy like that ought to make us all stop and think about the sacrifices we are asking of people,” said Jim Baetge, executive director of the Tahoe Regional Planing Agency.

Blessed, cursed, often sued--and more often grudgingly endured--the powerful planning agency extends its tentacles across the basin, governing all land-use decisions in a region that takes in portions of four counties.

Virtually any action that affects the land--cutting trees, paving a road, building a guest house or adding a back porch--requires approval from the agency. But it will issue only 300 building permits a year and has declared about 10% of the basin’s private property off-limits to construction.

If most of the basin’s 54,000 residents are willing to bend to the agency’s will, it is because they have been persuaded that every shovelful of earth and every gallon of runoff that winds up in the lake clouds not only the water but the future of the region.

“There are over 60 inlets to the lake and just one outlet,” said Charles Goldman, a UC Davis water expert who has been studying the lake for nearly 40 years. With such restricted outflow, he said, it takes 70 years for the lake to flush itself of impurities.

Every year, Goldman measures the clarity of the lake, using an instrument known as a Secchi disc, named after a 19th century Italian scientist.

Lowering the disc into Lake Tahoe until he can’t see it anymore, Goldman calculates that the water has lost more than one-third of its clarity in the past half-century and is continuing to do so at a rate of about one foot a year.

Revered locally as the conscience of Tahoe, Goldman has pretty much quieted debate here and in Washington about the condition of the lake and what to do about it.

“We see our mistakes in the water,” Babbitt said during a recent workshop. “Every square foot of land and what we do with it has a bearing on the quality of the water.”

Times staff writer Dave Lesher contributed to this story.