Letter: Who do you believe is protecting Lake Tahoe?
To the community,
Our Lake Tahoe … is America’s national gem.
The quality of our water … is the lifeblood of our communities.
We drink it … we cook with it … we play in it … we rely on it for the nourishment of our souls.
Our Lake Tahoe water fills our bodies and minds with the promise of what is possible for all of us.
Every day, it assures us there is still enrichment and wonderment in our world.
Its astonishing beauty is available to each of us who live here … and to those who visit.
We never tire of looking at it … and we never, ever, take it for granted.
Our water permeates everything around us and in us … our forests, our wildlife, and even our hearts.
Our Lake Tahoe’s water brings life to our children, to our schools, and to our dreams and our passions.
We will always protect it and preserve it for future generations. Always.
It is a mandate given to us by the universe itself.
Others, however, view Lake Tahoe only as a source of money and wealth.
And their greed is insatiable.
Their lust is practically incomprehensible.
And we who live here suffer … because of them.
So, who would you prefer to believe?
Them, or us?
Welcome to the Lake Tahoe Summit.
Bill Casey, Incline Village
Bill, perhaps you can provide us a list of places with declining economies and increasing expenditures for environmental improvement programs.
Well stated Mr. Casey. We certainly do have a unique responsibility to protect Lake Tahoe from short sighted greed ventures.- Please ignore the smarmy inquiries from those who should be characterized as the ‘them’ you reference in your letter to our community.
The title for the piece is OUR LAKE TAHOE SOUL. Thank you, TeaTotal.
Forget Lake Tahoe’s problems(?)as they pale in comparison to who is protecting the United States. Lake Tahoe is not a god so please don’t treat it like one. I bow down to no one except the supreme being and TRPA.
Alright, well I am one of the evil people intent on the destruction of the lake. But, I do have a question about all this. Where is the money Bill is talking about going to come from? SNPLMA? Lake Tahoe Restoration? I thinks we have a problem folks. There is no more money and not going to be any money unless it comes from the private sector. And Bill, you can not even come close to refuting that.
There is money out there. How much is the Forest Service using to do things like move the creek at High Meadows ($5 million) and, really, to what end? This is money that might have been redirected. Maybe our forest thinning could be done more economically if it were done in a less severe manner. But perhaps what Bill Casey is talking about is not so much environmental projects as it is simply not messing things up anymore than they already are. Some projects under consideration now will leave a big footprint on the land in terms of tree cutting, hard surface coverage, additional traffic and forest fragmentation. We could help the environment a lot by simply not asking more of the land than it can deliver. In order for the land to protect the lake, it must not continually be covered with more new buildings and parking lots.
What a bunch of vague, self righteous blather. THEM!
John, there is nothing to refute here. But I will ask the following questions and provide what I believe are some reasonable answers: What caused the huge algae bloom at South Lake Tahoe and the Tahoe Keys in the 1970s? The explosive growth and increased land development of subdivisions, condominiums, apartment buildings, major casino-hotels, and the sediment coming from Ski Run. What caused the near ten-year building moratorium beginning in the early 1980s? The then unrestricted and escalated growth of the same. What did the then executive director of the TRPA, Bill Morgan, have to say? The quality of our economy is inextricably linked to the quality of our environment. What are the problems we now face? The development and expansion of those same casino-hotels, other resorts elsewhere around the lake, time share projects, other fractional ownership projects, second-home ownership opportunities, and the like – and with all of those comes increased vehicle traffic, more people visiting here, an escalation of sediment runoff from parking lots and our roads, and more garbage to be hauled out from here each year. Is not three-million tourists a year enough? Do we need to increase that to four-million, five-million, more? John, who caused and continues to cause the problems we now face? The developers. So let them pay for the environmental mitigation measures needed, and let’s stop expecting the federal and California and Nevada state governments to come to our aid and rescue and bail us out from the problems caused by those folks in the private sector who continue to cause the problems. We don’t need any more casinos and hotels. We don’t need any more time shares and new resorts, mega or small, and more traffic and more visitors. We already have enough. I have lived here since 1984. I was an environmental science major at Sierra Nevada College and graduated from there in 1988 with a B.S. in environmental science with honors. I personally met with then TRPA Director Bill Morgan and discussed many of the issues we faced then. Lake Tahoe was my environmental science laboratory for four years. None of this is new to me. In fact, it’s just more of the same. So, you can go right ahead and attempt to kill the messenger, but the message will always be the same by those of us who hold a different set of values and priorities about Lake Tahoe than you. Where’s the money going to come from? If you lay all the particulars of the problems out on the table, then study those problems carefully and long enough, the solution will emerge. In addition, my earning a masters degree in journalism from UNR in 1998 also has taught me how and where to go for answers. Personally, I do not think you are “one of the evil people intent on the destruction of the lake,” as you have written so sarcastically, but I do perceive that you are grossly misinformed. As a sage mathematics instructor once told me, “Do your own homework and reach your own conclusions.” I don’t need anyone to tell me what to think and believe. I don’t require information from anyone else regarding any of this. And I have become acutely hip to the hyperbolic spin espoused by those whose objectives are profit motivated. And I think that anyone who has lived here full time for 30 years is capable of seeing through all of that as well. Yes, we do have a problem folks – Just ask John.
WE CAN’T CONTINUE TO SPEND MILLIONS OF $$$ ON KEEPING TAHOE CLEAR ! ! ! The U. S. doesn’t have the money . Oh, I know that some of you reading this believe that if the federal government gives us grant money for Tahoe clear water projects, then we have the money. But that is not true. If the U.S debt. were required to be payed off in a business like manor the U. S. government would be bankrupt now. We can’t keep spending money on things that we can’t afford. In ten years, or perhaps less, we’ll be forced to sacrifice our social security benefits to balance the U. S. budget and control the government debt. The government spending problem is very real. Political forces are already talking about reducing our social security benefits. The reason this problem is being ignored by the politicians is that they fear they will not be re-elected if they confront the problem now. That is as simple as I can describe the problem.
Withdrawing from a futile “war” in Afghanistan and from military spending in Iraq would be help fund schools, needed infrastructure improvements and, yes, even environmental restoration projects.
HEY HIKERCHICK, YOU CAN’T GET IT ! ! ! I explained it as simply as I possibly could, and you are one of those people that are not capable of understanding how serious the U. S. debt problem is. If we stopped spending money now, on everything except what we truly must have, we still couldn’t pay off our nation’s debt in twenty years. The situation requires great cuts in government spending beyond what most people can understand. I’m done here.
Pizza eater, the debt can never be zero.
I’m done here.
The topic here is the protection of Lake Tahoe, not the U.S. debt. Hikerchick clearly understands what she is talking about in this context, and she was astute enough to discern my message from the prose presented at the beginning of this discussion. The human footprint at Lake Tahoe is evident to everyone, and that is what needs to be reduced. The quality of the ecology of our lake’s water depends on the quality of the ecology of the land surrounding it. Reducing the human footprint can be done, and this would take time, but it can be done. I think Hikerchick has already shown that she is very capable of understanding our situation here at Tahoe, and I look forward to reading more of her suggestions.
Blah, blah, blah! OUR Lake Tahoe! You people act like this place belongs to you. It doesn’t. It belongs to the government. When you are dead and gone it will still be here. In case you haven’t noticed, things change. As an old guy, I can say for a fact that whether good or bad ( it all depends in your outlook) change is a daily part of life. If things hadn’t changed in the sixties, you all probably wouldn’t even be living here. Get off your high horses and stop sounding so hypocritical. Even the original native Americans left here for the winters because they are unlivable without all the amenities provided by the government agencies in the area. Eat your granola and hug a tree, but quit preaching about how YOUR Lake needs to be saved from the evil capitalists while you enjoy the fruits of their efforts without even acknowledging that without them you could not even live here.
The meaning of “our” does not imply any one single group of owners. In the context of this discussion it means all of us, including the government agencies, the capitalists, the environmentalists, the developers, the average citizens, the scientists, the spiritualists, and ALL OF US who live here. There is no longer any reason or need to split hairs about the word, “our.” We are all in this together. Each of us in this context may have our opinions on how best to protect our lake, but suggestions for doing this are a collective effort. Anyone can point out the problems and split hairs, Haddi. What we need are suggestions for improving the situation and potential cost-effective solutions to the problem(s). What suggestions for improvement and potential solutions can you bring to the discussion? There are no wrong answers here. It’s called brainstorming. And all of us have a stake in the outcome.
In light of the reality of funding, we all need to be vigilant and do our individual best to keep this Lake clean. As long as money gets wasted on big buildings, big salaries, lawyers, capricious and arbitrary regulations and brand-new vehicles, people will suspect that their tax dollars are not being put to the best uses possible. Bill, we are all impressed that you had an experimental laboratory for so long, but we call it home. Thank you.
dumbfounded is right on point. “Home” is the operative word. Lake Tahoe is my home, and it has been my home for 30 years. I spent the first four of those years studying my home from a scientific perspective. I reached my own conclusions then, and I hold my own opinions now. The answers are there, and you seem to hold some serious truth about our situation – the waste of some of the funding being provided. I say “some,” because not all of the current funding is being wasted. In fact, much of the funding appears to be used for addressing the problem and providing sustainable solutions. Let’s keep the things that we know are helping and get rid of the things that we know are not, such as the items you have pointed out. And let’s keep studying closely the picture of what it is we are all viewing right now. What is important here is the now. We study history so as not to make the same mistakes. We look to the future in order to create a vision. What are the things that we can all agree on? For me, it’s the need for advanced protection and preservation of our collective home. Thank you, dumbfounded, for your insight and intelligent suggestion.