Wednesday, June 9, 1999 | 1:38 a.m.
In the end, the lawsuit that Suitum filed in 1991, after being barred from building a house on her land, brought victory to neither the property rights advocates who pinned their hopes on it nor the environmentalists who feared it.
The case was settled this spring for $600,000, leaving unresolved the fundamental issues it raised about government restrictions on construction in environmentally sensitive areas.
Still, Suitum's challenge and other suits have left a wake that is gently rocking the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, which regulates development around Lake Tahoe in an effort to stem the pollution that has dulled its deep hues.
"I think this is a heads-up we need to pay attention to," said Joanne Neft, a board member of the California-Nevada agency. "Do we want to spend our money on legal battles or do we want to spend our money buying sensitive property?"
Another major lawsuit filed by 450 Tahoe lot owners has so far yielded mixed rulings and is on appeal by both sides.
Between the legal challenges and lobbying by the basin's property rights group, the Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, the planning agency is under pressure to jettison the complicated environmental point system by which it evaluates residential parcels around the lake to determine if building will be allowed.
The planning board appears unwilling to abandon the lot rules, but several members said there is a growing feeling that the agency needs to find ways to step up public acquisition of parcels that it wants to protect - and in the process head off more lawsuits by frustrated landowners.
"We cannot really make any major changes in the lot regulations without further jeopardizing the lake," said Terry Giles, recently appointed to the planning board by California Gov. Gray Davis. "We want to try to come up with a program or programs that will cause the homeowners to be properly compensated for their land but have the land remain vacant, thereby protecting Lake Tahoe."
Over the years, public agencies such as the state-funded California-Tahoe Conservancy and the U.S. Forest Service have bought thousands of parcels in the Tahoe basin to keep them off limits from development that contributes to lake pollution.
The planning agency has identified about 2,000 remaining environmentally sensitive lots that are vacant and in private hands-the majority of which planners would like to see protected.
But the pace of sales to public agencies has slowed.
"Right now we're at a standstill," said Neft, appointed to the planning board by former California Gov. Pete Wilson. "People are not ... willing to sell their property. Why? Is it because the prices are too low? Is it because they don't want to sell?"
At this point it is unclear what the agency will do to get more property owners to the bargaining table.
Additional federal money for land purchases would be available under legislation that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., plans to introduce this week. Co-sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Nevada's two senators, the bill would authorize $300 million in federal spending over 10 years for a variety of environmental programs in the Tahoe basin, including erosion control, land acquisition, traffic management, and removal of dead and dying trees to reduce fire risk.
The federal package is part of an overall $900-million plan to curb erosion and rehabilitate the basin, whose natural beauty has faded with haphazard development and sediment pollution of the lake.
The basin's land use regulations are a key part of attempts to halt the lake's deterioration. Suitum's case threatened not only those restrictions, but more broadly, the ability of federal, state and local authorities to block construction for environmental reasons.
Suitum, now 84, bedridden and legally blind, sued because Tahoe planning agency rules adopted in the 1980s barred her from building on a small lot she and her late husband acquired in 1972, about half a mile from the lake on the Nevada side. She contended that she had been deprived of her constitutional rights because she had lost the use of her land.
The planning agency argued that it had compensated her by offering to let her sell her building rights to another Tahoe property owner who would then be allowed, on a different site, to construct a larger house or more structures than would otherwise be permitted.
The high court ruled in 1997 on a narrow procedural issue, sending the case back without taking up the substantive constitutional questions. The settlement was reached as the suit was about to go to trial this spring in U.S. District Court in Nevada.
Suitum's attorney, Pat Cashill of Reno, termed the agreement significant because the planning agency is paying a hefty sum to a landowner denied the right to build.
But others see little precedent - both because of the unique aspects of Suitum's situation and because various government bodies in the Tahoe basin have previously resolved landowner suits by buying property.
The planning agency recently paid Suitum, who lives with a daughter near Sacramento, $150,000 and will hand over the rest of the money by mid-July. Suitum, in return, has conveyed her lot, about a third of an acre in Incline Village, to Nevada.
Much of the settlement will go to legal fees in the 8-year-old case. At this stage of her life, Suitum has no grand plans for the remainder, Cashill said.
Still, he added, "She feels vindicated. Mrs. Suitum always claimed the TRPA stole her land."
archive
