Clinton Pledges to Double Aid to Heal Tahoe Area

After seeing the fragile treasures of Lake Tahoe up close, President Clinton pledged Saturday to more than double the federal financial commitment to improving the environment of the basin.

Federal aid will grow by $26.6 million over two years, bringing the total aid to about $50 million, to boost local and state efforts to clear up the ever-murkier water of the lake, restore pine forests and make other improvements to protect an environment degraded by the tremendous popularity of the area.

“We don’t have an unlimited amount of time,” Clinton said during a two-hour “Lake Tahoe Presidential Forum” at a resort hotel on the lake shore. “We have to keep intensifying our efforts.”

Although waters in the 1,600-foot-deep lake are clear enough to see a white dinner plate 70 feet deep, pollutants have degraded conditions in recent years, with visibility diminishing at a rate of more than a foot a year. Scientists have warned that the decline could be irreversible if allowed to continue for another decade.

The threat the environmental degradation poses to the local economy--as well as to the glorious scenery--has spurred an unusual coalition of businesses, environmentalists and local and state government agencies in California and Nevada.

Clinton applauded their effort as “an outstanding model for the work we have to do to protect all kinds of national treasures and deal with all kinds of environmental challenges in the new economy.”

The president said other communities should heed the lesson learned in the Lake Tahoe region: that the environment and the economy are intertwined.

“President Theodore Roosevelt said, standing not far from here: ‘We are not building this country of ours for a day. It is to last through the ages,’ ” Clinton said. “You have given us a way to meet the challenge of the ages--by working together and understanding what our forebears knew centuries ago. We cannot divide our quest for prosperity from our obligation to hand nature, God’s great gift to us, on down to the generations.”

The federal government, which owns three-quarters of the land in the mountain-rimmed basin, is already spending about $12 million a year to help restore the environment of an area visited by as many as 300,000 people a day. Experts involved in the effort estimate that $700 million to $1 billion is needed in the coming decade or two for preservation and restoration, and California and Nevada have asked the federal government to cover $300 million of that cost.

White House officials said the new federal money will help fight erosion, restore water quality, revive forests and reduce traffic congestion by improving mass transit.

The uses of the additional federal money include:

* $7 million to help build a sewage pipeline that will replace a deteriorating conduit that is leaking wastes into the lake. The money is included in the draft 1998 budgets of the House and Senate.

* $880,000 as a grant to UC Davis for new computer modeling tools that will evaluate the benefit of various water quality improvement programs.

* $1.5 million to build a park-and-ride lot in Tahoe City, where visitors can catch shuttles to points of interest. Additional federal funding will help develop a mass transit system to cut down on the traffic congestion and emissions from cars, which pollute the air and water.

* $2 million, spread over five years, to clear brush and deadwood from federally owned land.

The U.S. Forest Service will use controlled fires to burn about 1,000 forest acres per year, helping to return natural ecological processes to Tahoe’s forests.

“Perhaps Smokey the Bear was a bit too successful,” said Kathleen McGinty, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “There is a role for natural fire systems to minimize the possibility of catastrophic fire.”

To curtail harmful runoff into the lake from old logging roads, the Forest Service will eliminate 29 miles of roads each year. At that rate, all old logging roads should be gone within a decade.

Another initiative announced Saturday was an agreement to give the Washoe, a tribe that is native to the Tahoe Basin, unimpeded access to the lake and the use of other land in the basin for the first time in more than 100 years.

“Many people have waited for generations and lifetimes for this moment to come,” said Brian Wallace, chairman of the tribal council.

The Forest Service has agreed to provide three plots of land to the tribe--one to build a cultural center, a second to cultivate traditional medicinal herbs and a third to give tribe members access to the lake to use as they like. The land is not far from South Lake Tahoe on the California side.

During the conference, Clinton said he had learned that the Washoe had written to President Ulysses S. Grant in 1877 requesting efforts to protect their sacred areas in order to preserve their culture.

“It just took 120 years, but I can tell you, from now on, the mail will run more rapidly between Lake Tahoe and Washington D.C.,” Clinton said. Clinton flew to Los Angeles after the press conference.

Earlier in the day, Clinton used his weekly radio address to urge Americans to make volunteerism and public service part of their lives. By way of example, Clinton said, 1,600 high school students with exemplary records as volunteers will receive college scholarships of up to $1,000 through a program that combines federal money with matching gifts from many of the nation’s leading service organizations.

The money grew out of a pledge Clinton’s administration made last year to contribute $500 per student if service organizations would put up the same. “Just a year later, I am proud to say that some of our nation’s most prominent service organizations have answered that call,” he said.

The matching money came from the American Legion, the Kiwanis Club, the Rotary Club, the Elks, the Lions Club, the Junior Leagues and the Miss America foundation, Clinton said.

Clinton attended the forum at Lake Tahoe after taking a cruise on the lake in a UC Davis research vessel.

The captain of the 37-foot craft, Charles Goldman, told Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, who accompanied the president for the day, that he had seen a remarkable change over recent years with the various interests of the community starting to work together to improve the environment.

“We’ve truly moved beyond the conflict,” said Goldman, a professor who has worked on the lake for 40 years. “Everybody knows that they lose if the lake goes down the tubes.”

Gore said he was very impressed with the unusual cooperation. “I see you as creators of a blueprint that will be used in many other places,” Gore told government officials, business people and environmental specialists during a panel discussion Friday under pine trees on the California side of the lake.