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177 In its early years, trpa was designed to be weak and ineffective. Environmental groups and the courts needed to take action to slow the lake’s degradation. Its compact amended, trpa became an awkward tool, slow to issue approvals and at times inefficient and petty. Not only did the agency deny building rights on sensitive lands, but it also came to restrict owners’ prerogatives on developed properties and on land deemed buildable. Today conservation activists are apprehensive that in attempting to loosen regulations and pursue restoration projects, the agency may be losing sight of its primary responsibility. The trpa Draft 2011 Environmental Threshold Report revealed that of thirty-six indicators traditionally used in threshold evaluations, only nine are in attainment, eighteen are not being attained, and the other nine are unknown. Lack of funding has reduced or eliminated monitoring networks that reveal the status of some threshold attainment, yet, activists protest, the agency’s approval of new developments will attract more visitors and create “more coverage, more cars, and more environmental impacts.”1 Despite inadequacies and the controversies that surround trpa, it is clear that if it had not superseded local jurisdictions, with the associated pressures from developers, the decline in the lake’s health would be significantly more pronounced. At the August 2011 Tahoe Summit, Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, who had recently signed sb 271, and California governor Jerry Brown announced a joint commitment to produce a trpa Regional Plan Update by the end of 2012. In April 2011, trpa had introduced a draft rpu with a significant number of contentious issues. There had been little commentary on what executive director Marchetta described as the heart of the proposals: offering incentives for removal of buildings from stream environment zones, clustering buildings in town centers that would reduce land coverage and create walkable spaces, and developing pollution-reducing transportation systems.2 Critics found the items intended to support those proposals more e i g h t e e n n green versus green 178 s a v i n g l a k e t a h o e problematic. At sessions held for public comment on the plan in the spring of 2012, individuals raised a number of questions about them. One challenge was over a proposal to allow condominiums or hotels on recreation land adjoining ski runs. The theory behind the recreation-lands idea was to encourage visitors to leave their cars parked once arriving at their destination. Pointing out the impact of building on such an immense number of sites—some ninety areas would be affected—E. Clement Shute, a former League to Save Lake Tahoe attorney for more than twenty years, now a trpa Board member, agreed that regarding that issue, “there is plenty of room for debate.”3 Along with environmentalists’ reactions, the Draft rpu triggered an immediate response from another of the agency’s usual watchdogs. The California Attorney General’s Office pointed to examples of proposals that might lead to serious legal problems: the delegation of large projects to local governments, weakened coverage requirements, and the allowance of significant amounts of new development. But in a change of tone from previous critiques, Deputy Attorney General Daniel Siegel said that the plan’s shortcomings could be solved if people worked together. “We think that these defects can be fixed in a way that meets the needs of the various stakeholders. They can be fixed in a way that gives local governments more say in the process. They can be fixed in a way that encourages environmentally sound redevelopment projects, and they can be fixed in a way that protects the lake.”4 Owing to Brown’s and Sandoval’s commitment, the Draft rpu initiated a new procedure for addressing the unsettled policies. California’s natural resources secretary, John Laird, and Nevada’s Leo Drozdoff organized a stakeholders group to find solutions. E. Clement Schute chaired the committee. Referred to in the press as the “Gang of Ten,” the group included diverse individuals: Dr. Darcie Goodman-Collins, the new executive director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe; Kyle Davis of the Nevada Conservation League; two county government representatives; trpa Governing Board member Steve Robinson, a Nevada lobbyist representing that state’s Department of Natural Resources; South Tahoe mayor Claire Fortier, an outspoken critic of the agency; a representative of basin businesses who had previously represented the casino alliance ; as well as Laird and Drozdoff. The group considered seventeen disputed [3.138.113.188...

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