Editorial: Preserve Lake Tahoe by preserving agency

Thursday, March 20, 2003 | 8:56 a.m.

Lake Tahoe is a destination for tourists from around the world and has been almost from the time it was discovered by John C. Fremont in 1844. Its spectacular alpine setting on the Nevada-California border west of Carson City is not even its finest feature. People come to see its water, whose clarity inspired early writing by Mark Twain and continues to generate awe. Having survived the timber and mining industries, the lake became threatened in the mid-20th century by the growth of private development.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was created 30 years ago to meet this threat. A bill in the Assembly sponsored by Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, R-Reno, whose co-sponsors include Assemblyman Harry Mortenson of Las Vegas, would have Nevada withdraw from the pact. Mortenson should remember how Southern Nevadans supported a bond issue in 1996 to preserve the lake. And he and the bill's other supporters irritated by TRPA's "bureaucracy" should imagine what the lake would look like without it. Withdrawing from TRPA is as unthinkable as dumping raw sewage into the lake, a common practice before the agency was founded.