Columnist Susan Snyder: Statewide, growth needs planning

Monday, Jan. 24, 2005 | 8:18 a.m.

It's not easy being popular.

Not that I would know personally, of course. About the only place I'm popular is at home, and then it's only because I have the opposable thumbs needed to open a can of cat food.

But residents in opposite corners of our state are struggling with the unbridled, and unsolicited, popularity and population growth that has marched West for decades.

Today we get the chance to speak up on behalf of one region. But we may only be able to keep our fingers crossed for the other one.

Lake Tahoe-area planning officials are in Las Vegas today to gather residents' comments on a project called Pathway 2007 (www.pathway2007.org). The meeting is from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in the UNLV Moyer Student Union. Go inside and look for signs.

Pathway 2007 is a cooperative effort among residents and agency officials who hope to create a comprehensive 20-year plan for Lake Tahoe. The effort's big players are the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.

Public workshops are being conducted in the Nevada and California communities that embrace Lake Tahoe, but also here and in Los Angeles. A big part of the lake's burden is supporting the activities and interests of some 3 million visitors each year, about 750,000 of whom live in Nevada.

Some visitors choose to stay, which means the region's year-round population is growing and bringing with it the problems people create. U.S. Census projections say the Tahoe basin's population is projected to jump from 56,169 in 2000 to 58,458 in 2010.

OK, so that's barely half of the number of people who move to the Las Vegas Valley in a month. But Lake Tahoe is one of the world's clearest sub-alpine lakes, and we want to keep it that way, right?

Right. So go to the meeting and help those planners understand what it is you want to see -- and don't want to see -- happen to our watery jewel.

Then, go home and weep for Logan- dale. Clark County commissioners last week approved two requests from developers to build more houses in an area devastated by flood earlier this month.

Despite protests from residents and a member of the Moapa Valley Town Advisory board, commissioners paved the way for a developer's plan to build two homes per acre in an 8-acre gated community near Heyer Street and Gubler Avenue.

Gated? In Logandale? To keep out what? Cattle and butterflies?

If I lived there, I'd be throwing myself in front of the bulldozers as well. Gated communities spread like tamarisk, and they're uglier.

They're almost as ugly as the arrogance, and reality, of the comments made by a man representing the project, who said the loss of the area's rural flavor is all a part of progress and growth.

According to a Las Vegas Sun report published Thursday, the developer's representative, David Turner, told commissioners that Logandale, Overton and the rest of the Moapa Valley are simply Las Vegas neighborhoods in waiting.

Waiting, I suppose, to see whether being popular is all it's cracked up to be. I'm thinking Logandale residents already are aware that it's not.