Saving Lake Tahoe: An Environmental History of a National Treasure

Preface

ix preface In the weeks before delivery of this manuscript for publication, stories about Lake Tahoe headlined Internet sites, television news, and the pages of the New York Times: “Conservationists File Suit over Lake Tahoe Compact,” “Giant Goldfish Found in Tahoe,” “Nevada Governor Favors Abandoning Tahoe Pact,” “Lake Tahoe’s Clarity Best in Ten Years.” Because of Lake Tahoe’s awe-inspiring beauty, scientific findings and political disputes over it are newsworthy. Yet there is no single source that puts stories about the lake in context or ties them together. Saving Lake Tahoe: An Environmental History of a National Treasure is intended to fill that void. It charts the events that have shaped the area, beginning with logging companies clear-cutting the forests in the 1870s. It discusses the complications, past and present, in attempting to rehabilitate and protect a delicate ecosystem governed by multiple authorities. The book explains the passionate fights between those who seek to preserve environmental qualities by regulating development and those advocating for the rights of business and property owners, and it reviews groundbreaking efforts to utilize science in establishing policies of governance. The Tahoe story holds personal interest for me: I grew up at the lake, moving there in 1959, and have lived there most of my life. I have known a number of key actors in its modern history, some of whom assisted in the compilation of this study. Larry Schmidt was foremost in helping out. His father, Andrew Schmidt, led the US Forest Service team that helped develop the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the agency charged with protecting the lake for the past forty years, and wrote a comprehensive account that documents the Forest Service’s role at the lake as well as trpa’s early history. Larry Schmidt provided me with cartons of his father’s research as well as several tapes of interviews with principals involved in the lake’s mid-twentieth-century governance. Larry Schmidt’s own career spanned several decades as a Forest Service hydrologist, and he introduced me to two agency figures who played critical roles in the x p r e f a c e Tahoe story and agreed to be interviewed: former US Forest Service associate chief Doug Leisz and renowned physical geologist Robert G. Bailey, who produced the Lake Tahoe Basin capabilities map—and for whom “the Bailey system,” devised from it, is named. Other important players in these events who took time to provide their perspective in interviews include former Washoe Indian Tribal chair Brian Wallace and Washoe traditionalist Art George; former Lake Tahoe Forest Service supervisor and trpa executive director Bill Morgan; Robert Twiss, US government and UN planning adviser who has acted as a State of California consultant on Tahoe for more than forty years; Bob Richards, who led scientific experiments on Lake Tahoe for thirty-five years; retired Lake Tahoe Forest Service hydrologist Bill Johnson; former spokesperson for trpa the late Dennis Oliver; Rochelle Nason, who served as League to Save Lake Tahoe executive director for eighteen years; Steve Teshara, who for many years represented the Tahoe Gaming Alliance and other lake-basin businesses; Tahoe Area Sierra Club representative Laurel Ames; Bob Kingman of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy ; Bob Ferguson of Lahontan Water Quality Control; Robert Stewart, former administrative assistant to Nevada governor Mike O’Callaghan; and current League to Save Lake Tahoe executive director Darcie Goodman-Collins. Bill Johnson and Bob Richards were gracious as well in making available photos from their private collections. Flavia Sordelet provided access to photos from the League to Save Lake Tahoe collection. Jessica Maddox assisted me at University of Nevada, Reno, Special Collections, and Kim Roberts was especially helpful in taking the time to find Special Collections pictures that are not replicated online. In addition, University of Nevada Press director Joanne O’Hare offered valuable suggestions, design and production manager Kathleen Szawiola provided guidance regarding photos and supervised the graphic planning and design of the book, and senior editor Matt “Becks” Becker directed the project , advising me throughout. As in my last project, I was fortunate to have Annette Wenda as copy editor: adding, deleting, and rearranging text to ensure it conveyed what was intended and correcting the format of the notes so they made some sense. Others who provided important information or avenues of p r e f a c e xi research include McAvoy Layne, Guy Rocha, Susan Searcy, Joyce...