New era of cooperation at Lake Tahoe

Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Battle fatigue has made collaborators of combatants, and the uncompromising have been sidelined, according to a report Sunday by the Sacramento Bee.

"We have learned in the past 10 years that a balance exists between upgrading the community and environmental benefits," says Lew Feldman, an attorney for developers of a $140 million south shore redevelopment project approved in November.

"While it has been a slow and painful process, most of us want the same things, regardless of where we are sitting at the table," Feldman added.

The results have been startling: On California's south shore, stylish hotels and resurrected wetlands are replacing rundown motels and parking lots. Businesses blocking beach and mountain access are being relocated.

The tourist strip jammed helter-skelter against Stateline hotel-casinos is molting into an alpine pedestrian village with European touches, including a gondola to Heavenly Ski Resort lifts by 1999.

Resort owners on both sides of the border are raising money for a public-private shuttle system.

Nevada gaming magnates are talking of rebuilding their imposing monuments of tinted glass into mall-style gaming and shopping arenas to showcase more of the natural glitter - North America's largest alpine lake.

And all around the 500-square-mile basin, historic opponents are lobbying U.S. officials to help revegetate barren slopes and restore forests.

Enticed by the unity, the Clinton administration has tentatively agreed to convene what would be the first presidential summit at the lake next year. The gathering would address local pleas to thin fire-prone forests and control road runoff in the 75 percent of the basin managed by the federal government.

All these changes have been possible because in 1987 the long-warring factions - the environmentalist League to Save Lake Tahoe, pollution enforcers with the California Attorney General's office, lakefront owners, developers and casino moguls, ski resort operators and various government agencies - agreed to resolve conflicts through a formal "consensus process."

"We started to see that we could all work together because we needed a strong economy to fund the cleanup of the environment," said Judith Von Klug, South Lake Tahoe's redevelopment coordinator.

The League, for example, supported new and expanded hotels, resorts and restaurants on the south shore because developers and government agencies were paying for the drainage and public transit needed to improve the visibility across and within the lake.

Similarly, when Nevada voters were asked in November to float $20 million in state bonds to pay for erosion controls on their side of the lake, gaming and ski resorts were the chief campaign donors.

Such support from gambling industry executives came after a decade of declining revenues. Managers at the lake realized they had overlooked their one ace in the hole over Las Vegas, Reno and other gambling meccas - the natural beauty of the Tahoe basin.

"We were walled in this basin, and we fell out of touch," said Steve Teshara of the Lake Tahoe Gaming Alliance, a group of Stateline casino operators.

Now, the casinos and Heavenly Ski Resort are moving ahead with an innovative transit service designed to unclog Highway 50 and help air quality.

After seven years of talks and $3 million in environmental studies, Heavenly got TRPA approval this year on a 20-year expansion plan.

Residential growth no longer bounces between runaway and frozen, but is allowed to proceed within limits based on air and water pollution - at present 300 homes a year.

But conciliation has not touched all of the basin's players.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in October to consider the case of a Nevada woman whose lot in the north shore's Incline Village was zoned environmentally unfit for development.

California Resources Secretary Douglas Wheeler said the case "will strike at the heart of the TRPA's regulatory authority if the court rules the wrong way."

Other areas of disagreement include public access to the waterfront, pier construction, possible restrictions on personal watercraft such as Jet Skis, and day-use fee proposals.

Environmental activist Laurel Ames questions whether the consensus effort is ultimately going to protect the lake.

"It wasn't focused on how are we going to stop the decline of the lake," said Ames, former executive director of the League. "It was focused on how are we going to get along. There was no science. They didn't take the time to figure it out."

John Falk, who represented north shore real estate brokers during the breakthrough consensus talks a decade ago, sees it differently.

"In the end, we can all study the lake while it turns green, or we can all start acting right now to keep it blue," he says.