Author, Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos, lives in Washoe County and volunteers with Tahoe grassroots groups working to protect Lake Tahoe.

Where Lake Tahoe is concerned, leadership is not just lacking from elected officials and land use agencies at the county, state and federal level; it’s reckless.

Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s (TRPA) executive director laid out a jargon-laden 2024-2025 work plan that is not only deficient; it ignores the elephant in the room. Wildfire dangers continue to outpace projections across the West. Property insurance premiums are soaring around Tahoe and insurers are pulling out or canceling policies altogether due to wildfire risks.

While we all salute those in firefighting and fuels reduction who mitigate wildfire spread, it’s a daunting task in the Tahoe basin with 22 million more trees than a healthy forest should have. Some 70,000 are dead and more are dying from disease. 

Ignoring housing used as lodging

Against this backdrop, TRPA irrationally fast-tracked increased housing height and density and more tourist amenities and facilities falsely represented as “environmental improvements.

Without calculating how many existing housing units are used predominantly for tourist accommodation, TRPA approved ordinance changes to allow more structures. Originally formed to protect Lake Tahoe, the agency now relies on a simplistic environmental checklist that routinely declares no significant impact on land, water or environment. It has approved luxury condominiums and lodging projects and is entertaining more expansive developments. Public opposition routinely highlights that these projects are out of reach for the workforce or out of scale for rural communities on gridlocked roads.

Meanwhile, approved projects languish in non-compliance, or as KTVN reports, lack funding and security deposits to address blighted (fire risk) conditions.

Doubling down on ill-conceived trail expansion

Press releases trumpeted millions in funds for new Tahoe trail construction. Missing is any mention of an updated, modern Tahoe basin carrying capacity to account for the exploding number of day visitors and out of state and country travelers.

The $24 million announced from a U.S. Department of Transportation grant will finance a 1.8-mile extension of Tahoe’s East Shore Trail. The biggest transportation issue facing the lake and the Tahoe basin is not a trail deficit.

This pet project, ill-conceived from the start by a nonprofit funded by resort companies and developers, opened up the once-inaccessible East Shore. Lobbyists wooed federal and state agencies and counties with visions of “more heads in beds.” The trail’s initial three miles cost $40.5 million funded by local, state, federal and private sources. Parking was an afterthought as was how to get crowds to stay on marked trails. Plans didn’t factor in wagons, coolers, beach furniture — all manner of gear. The project installed one two-stall outhouse. Microplastics, dog waste and trash raise new health and ecosystem concerns. Shoreline habitats are trampled as unauthorized social trails increase.

Opened five years ago, this widely promoted destination compounded Tahoe’s evacuation challenges. A once-pristine shoreline now gets millions of visitors using the two-lane State Route 28 like a mall drop-off, backing up traffic and parking haphazardly wherever they can abandon their vehicles. The trail announcement pays lip service to evacuation and smart transportation.

Ignoring transportation dangers

What Tahoe needs is USDOT funds for transportation data gathering tools to monitor the number of vehicles and passengers entering the basin. We get text alerts for any number of products and services, and GPS knows where we are on the road. How about a two-way system so drivers, local sheriffs and transportation districts can measure and alert when traffic into the basin has reached its peak? It could redirect visitor traffic to parking outside the basin — think Zion National Park.  

Cell towers are unreliable during wildfires. Why not use Tahoe as a model to generate new satellite-based transportation apps and prototypes that can be deployed in other geographically constrained areas?  A congested roadway surrounded by forested mountains is inherently high-risk — particularly when summer roadwork closes a lane and Washoe Zephyr winds whip fiercely around Tahoe. A spark from a vehicle, construction equipment or battery fire can produce tragedy. Let’s not kid ourselves. This is our new reality. Memories of the frenetic Caldor Fire evacuation remain fresh.

Tahoe comprises two states, five counties, dozens of rural communities and one city. If you ask visitors what state, county or jurisdiction they’re in, and how to evacuate in a wildfire, odds are they wouldn’t have a clue.

Public structures have maximum occupancies and evacuation best practices exist. Using this logic and lessons from fire evacuation tragedies across the country, how many people can the Tahoe basin safely accommodate? No one in authority seems to want that information. Do they not want the answer as it would undermine or interfere with aggressive development plans? Or do they simply want plausible deniability?

Additional misguided leadership and land use examples:

• Nevada’s Legislative Committee for the Review and Oversight of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency in June failed to address Tahoe’s carrying capacity or probe deeply on evacuation despite pleas from the public. A Nevada State Park presentation revealed a  250 percent visitation increase at Sand Harbor to 1.3 million visitors in 2023. Vehicles back up for miles on the two-lane road hugging the lake to attempt access. It can take hours to drive a few miles. Built in the 1970s, the park infrastructure was designed to hold 1,200 people a day; today it gets thousands more.
• The U.S. Forest Service is in discussions to expand and develop land surrounding a ¾-mile stretch of scenic Tahoe beach with a concessionaire recently terminated after failing the Crater Lake National Park. The area encompasses Zephyr Shoals, which grabbed worldwide attention when it was overrun by drunken crowds that destroyed the area. Not surprisingly, the public raised concerns.

No amount of researched arguments or evidence from a bipartisan public gets traction at county, state or federal meetings where Tahoe land use priorities get determined and funded. It’s dumbfounding how readily Tahoe policy makers dismiss safety issues in favor of more tourism attractions that degrade the lake’s water quality (already EPA listed as impaired) and generate more vehicle-miles traveled.

Repeatedly asked why the obsession with more ways to bring more people into a nationally recognized high-risk wildfire basin with not just limited but constrained roads, answers include deflection:

• From federal officials: It’s a local issue.
• From TRPA: Evacuation is not our job (Tahoe’s land use authority and metropolitan planning organization decisions, however, can truly hamstring evacuations).
• From the county and state: We’ve arranged presentations; what more do you want?

How about a moratorium on new construction and projects until an updated carrying capacity establishes what the Tahoe basin can safely support? Spearhead a Tahoe basin-wide evacuation drill that encompasses day trippers, local workers, and residents at summer peak.

Smart organizations and successful leaders don’t deflect or hide from problems; they tackle them. Our leaders must wake up and address the threats facing today’s rapidly changing West.  It is immoral to knowingly put visitor and resident lives at risk and set up our firefighters and first responders for failure — most especially in favor of overtourism and half-baked development.