For Immediate
Release: Monday, February 11, 2013
Contact: Kari Birdseye, Earthjustice, 415-217-2098, kbirdseye@earthjustice.org
Weakened Environmental Plan for Lake Tahoe
Challenged in Court
Tahoe
Regional Planning Agency transferred its legal duty of lake protection to local
authorities
Sacramento, CA -- Two
Tahoe conservation groups, the Sierra Club and Friends of the West Shore, filed
a federal lawsuit on Monday
challenging new rules for Lake Tahoe that seriously reduce protections for the
treasured mountain lake. The new Tahoe Regional Plan Update,
approved in December by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), shifts
authority over future development decisions to local jurisdictions. The plan also allows those towns and counties
to adopt weakened pollution controls that do not meet the minimum environmental
requirements established by TRPA.
“In 1980,
Congress, along with the states of California and Nevada, specifically
entrusted a regional body to oversee all environmental protection and land use
at Lake Tahoe, including project approvals, to ensure that local governments do
not allow runaway development,” said Trent Orr, attorney with the public
interest law firm Earthjustice, which represents the
conservation groups. “The 1980 Compact requires TRPA to approve all projects
within the region, and to establish minimum regional standards for project
approval. They can’t legally cede that power and leave it to the local
governments that failed to protect Tahoe in the past. There is no reason to believe that
cash-strapped local governments would adopt and enforce adequate environmental
protection measures in the face of lucrative development proposals.”
Lake Tahoe is
one of the largest and deepest mountain lakes in the United States, and TRPA’s
fundamental purpose is to restore the lake’s water clarity and health. Under the challenged plan, water quality
monitoring does not require actual monitoring water quality of runoff; it only tracks
whether runoff catchment basins have been installed where they are needed.
The plan also
encourages replacing low-rise buildings that surround the lake with taller,
bulkier structures. Near the casino
corridor of South Lake Tahoe, height restrictions have increased under the new
rules from three to six stories; in smaller villages such as Tahoe City, two to
four stories; and in Nevada, casinos can reach up to 197 feet, or 19 stories.
“This
new plan fails to recognize that an increase in buildings, rooftops, and
pavement will mean an increase in the amount of polluted rain and snowmelt - - runoff
that flows directly into the Lake,” said Laurel Ames of the Tahoe Area Sierra
Club in California. “Stormwater from pavement
and roads is the leading cause of the Lake’s loss of clarity. Allowing more pavement and roads seriously
undermines efforts to clean up the once pristine lake.”
The revised plan
also allows local governments to set development regulations that do not meet
minimum regional standards, including standards for how much land can be paved,
or “covered.” This violates the Compact’s requirement that TRPA establish
“a minimum standard applicable throughout the region.”
“This is a
wrenching departure from past practice and is not in line with the spirit or
law of the bi-state Compact created to protect the lake,” said David von Seggren of the Toiyabe Sierra
Club in Nevada. “The people of Nevada,
just like the people of California, care about the ecological health of Lake
Tahoe. Rather than weakening the Compact
or threatening to pull out completely, our leaders should be urging TRPA to
develop the region in a way that not only protects the ecosystem but actually
improves it.”
Susan Gearhart
with Friends of the West Shore agreed that environmental protection should be
TRPA’s first priority. “We support a responsible plan
which needs to leverage redevelopment to actually achieve restoration of
critically sensitive areas, instead of facilitating urbanization, which will
exacerbate traffic and congestion,” she said. “For generations, residents and visitors have
enjoyed the high Sierra alpine splendor of Lake Tahoe. We must preserve those qualities that make
Tahoe so special, and that we all love—clean water and clean air.”
Background:
In 1968,
California and Nevada entered into a bi-state agreement designed to protect
natural resources and control development in the Lake Tahoe Basin. The
agreement, the Tahoe Regional Planning Compact, created the Tahoe Regional
Planning Agency (TRPA) to serve as the land use and environmental protection
agency for the Lake Tahoe region and became effective through congressional
authorization and the President’s signature in December 1969. When the
1969 Compact failed to stem growth as intended, the states adopted amendments
authorized by Congress in December 1980. One of the most significant
changes in 1980 was its requirement that one regional body, TRPA, review and
approve all projects within the region, so that the welfare of the entire Tahoe
Basin would be taken into account in decisions regarding new development
proposals.
The Compact also
required TRPA to adopt “environmental threshold carrying capacities,” or
“thresholds” — “environmental standard[s] necessary to maintain a significant
scenic, recreational, educational, scientific or natural value of the region or
to maintain public health and safety within the region.” Within one year,
TRPA was required to adopt a regional plan that would achieve and maintain
these thresholds. After a lawsuit by the State of California to enforce
the Compact’s regional plan and threshold provisions, a new regional plan took effect
in 1987 that has since provided the framework for ensuring that all development
is consistent with achieving and maintaining these thresholds. While the
1987 Plan has not succeeded in attaining many of these thresholds (including
lake clarity, which has steadily declined over the years), it has more or less limited
urbanization of the Tahoe region.
But developers
and other business interests in Nevada have long complained that the Compact
and the 1987 Plan’s controls and standards are too restrictive. In 2011,
pressure from these interests led to passage of a Nevada law that requires
Nevada to withdraw from the Compact in 2015 if California did not agree to
certain changes in the Compact and TRPA did not adopt a new regional
plan. In reaction to this threat, TRPA hastened to complete the “Regional
Plan Update” it had started, which proposed significant weakening of the 1987
Plan. Under the influence of SB 271 and
political pressure to “save the Compact,” California agreed to
much of this weakening in the resulting “Bi-State Consultation Recommendations.”
On December 12,
2012, TRPA adopted a Regional Plan Update, which incorporated these
recommendations. Most significantly,
they include the delegation to local governments of TRPA’s project-review and
approval duties for projects under 100,000 square feet
in size. This delegation runs counter to the Compact’s intent to provide
regional oversight of projects and violates the Compact’s clear directive that
it is the TRPA governing board’s duty to review and approve projects and to
make findings that any project it approves complies with the Regional Plan and
TRPA’s rules to effectuate that plan.
In addition, the
Plan Update weakens the standards by which new projects are reviewed and
approved. It allows local governments to establish development standards
that do not meet minimum regional requirements, including standards for how
much land can be paved, or “covered.” This unlawfully leaves it to local
governments to provide the “minimum standard[s] applicable throughout the
region” that TRPA should be providing and fails to ensure that such standards
are at least as protective as TRPA’s.
The Plan Update
also opens more than 300 acres of undeveloped land to “resort recreation”
development, expanding Tahoe’s urban boundary; allows up to 3,200 new
residential units and 200,000 square feet of new commercial floor area; and
allows increased concentration of coverage closer to the lake in urban core
areas – up to 70 percent land coverage in designated “community centers.”
The Plan Update’s strategy to restore Lake Tahoe is to loosen development
restrictions and incentivize redevelopment in urban core areas while removing
existing development from sensitive outlying areas, on the theory that this
would enable more environmentally sensible projects. However, this
strategy fails to account for the drastic increase in new, concentrated
development that the Plan Update allows and the harmful impacts of that
increase, and does not ensure that compensatory removal of existing development
on sensitive lands will, in fact, occur. The environmental analysis on
the Plan Update fails to adequately study the water quality, air quality, and
impervious coverage impacts of that increase, and to ensure enough removal of
existing development to offset the impacts of new development. As a
result, TRPA’s required findings that the regional plan, as amended, “achieves
and maintains” the thresholds are not supported by evidence.
The Plan Update will
precipitate a drastic expansion of development that would be allowed without
adequate environmental safeguards, preventing the achievement of the Compact’s
core purpose - protection and restoration of Lake Tahoe. Most of Tahoe’s
developable land is in California, which contains two-thirds of the Lake’s
shoreline, where existing development poses the most serious water-quality
problems.
Link to the
complaint:
http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/FINALTahoeRPUComplaint.pdf
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