Personal-craft riders fight for survival at Tahoe

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's shorezone partnership committee will be asked to re-examine possible regulations governing the popular watercraft and listen to additional testimony.

While the meeting will not be a public hearing, interested parties may submit comments to the committee's members, who represent local and state agencies, private property owners and business interests around the basin.

The committee, which has adopted consensus positions on a number of shorezone issues, had previously proposed to expand the areas in Lake Tahoe off limits to personal watercraft.

Complaints over noise, safety and possible water pollution have prompted the committee and a TRPA policy committee to consider new regulations over the watercraft, whose numbers on Lake Tahoe have grown dramatically.

On Nov. 19, a committee of TRPA board members agreed to submit proposed regulations to the agency's full governing board in January, but asked that the partnership committee review the available information one last time.

Mirage Resorts Chairman Steve Wynn, who serves on the TRPA board, said he will propose a hard-line answer to the environmental questions raised by watercraft use unless new information becomes available before the end of December.

Critics and defenders of personal watercraft have engaged in a spirited tug-of-war with the TRPA in recent months over possible regulation. The agency has received hundreds of letters from both sides.

Meanwhile, preservation of the natural beauty of Lake Tahoe's east shore while meeting growing recreational demands will be the subject of two public workshops Wednesday.

Comments from people who speak at the 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. TRPA workshops will be used to help draft a management plan for the area, which includes isolated beaches favored by nude sunbathers.

The area includes State Route 28 from Incline Village south to the intersection of U.S. 50, known as Spooner Junction, and the lands from the lake shore to the ridge east of the highway.

The TRPA said the area takes in some of Tahoe's most pristine recreational areas which are under increasing pressure because of heavy public use. Thousands of people hike from the highway to beaches every summer.

The plan will focus on parking, beach access, limiting capacity of recreation sites, construction of bicycle paths, hiking trails and development within the area.

Improving conditions along the highway is one of the TRPA's priorities. Lack of adequate drainage, roadside parking and visitors eroding soil by hiking downhill to the lake all contribute to Tahoe's clarity problems, the agency has said.

The TRPA has been considering a plan that would ban all roadside parking and funnel traffic to new developed parking areas served by shuttle buses.

Aside from parking areas, the only other developments along the several miles of road between Incline and the U.S. 50 intersection are Nevada's Sand Harbor state park and the old Whittell estate, now owned by mutual fund tycoon and philanthropist Jack Dreyfus Jr.