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In mid-December of 1977, in a highly anticipated speech at Lake Tahoe, then California State Secretary for Resources, Huey D. Johnson, issued a clear call for very heavy-handed governmental control in the Tahoe Basin in the name of environmental protection.  Some have argued that this was the beginning of the environmental movement in the Tahoe Basin.  But in truth, the movement had begun much earlier, probably as early as the early to mid 1950’s.

 

The Tahoe Improvement and Conservation Association was formed by a group of wealthy lakefront property owners to help check the rapid development occurring in the mid 1950’s to early 1960’s.  As usual, the “environmentalists” were people who already owned property in a desirable area trying to limit access to that area by others.  By 1957, the organization had changed its name to The League to Save Lake Tahoe just in time for its first major battle. The new group felt that local governments, which were in charge of managing growth, were very lax and inconsistent in that regulation.  The League favored the idea of a regional governmental entity that would have the power to overrule those local governmental decisions.

 

One early attempt to move development planning to a regional basis backfired badly.  The so-called “1980 Plan”, developed in 1964 by the Tahoe Regional Planning Commission, was an attempt to set guidelines that would produce an acceptable sixteen year forward, 1980 development outcome.  But the “1980 Plan” was anything but acceptable to the League to Save Lake Tahoe.  The plan called for a four-lane highway around the Lake, a large bridge across the mouth of Emerald Bay, a major freeway on the South Shore, casino districts completely around the Lake, and an artificial island in the South end of the Lake.  The Plan anticipated 300% growth in tourists and full-time residents by 1980.  Perhaps more than any other action taken during the early chapters of development disputes at Lake Tahoe, the “1980 Plan” galvanized environmentalists to action and ultimately led to heavy-handed governmental intervention.

 

By 1967, the California and Nevada Legislatures acted to attempt to control what seemed to be out-of-control growth by forming the CTRPA (California Tahoe Regional Planning Agency) and the NTRPA (Nevada Tahoe Regional Planning Agency) as independent political subdivisions, part of the bi-state Tahoe Regional Planning Compact (TRPC), but with unclear power to act and minimal budgets.  The nebulous mandate of the CTRPA was to “establish a long-range management program that would alleviate problems of resource use and deficiencies in environmental control near Lake Tahoe.”  CTRPA and NTRPA officials interpreted that mandate as giving them the powers to regulate commercial and residential construction, development along the shoreline, timber harvesting, and transportation and roadway growth.  Existing state and county agencies viewed these plans as ridiculous over-reach and refused to comply. Developers, land owners, and county authorities in both California and Nevada resented, sued, and largely ignored these new governmental creations.  County planners appeared to generally favor growth, perhaps as a way to marginalize the power of the newly created agencies. 

 

The battles grew increasingly fierce.  Land owners, builders, developers, business owners on one side; environmentalists, bureaucrats, and some elected officials on the other.  Infighting persisted even within governmental entities as the new agencies found themselves increasingly at odds with other long-existing governmental entities, such as County Planning Commissions, that were unwilling to relinquish any of their power to the upstart agencies.  Eventually, President Richard Nixon, Nevada Governor Paul Laxalt, and California Governor Ronald Reagan stepped in to lead the formation of the Tahoe Regional Planning Association (TRPA) in 1969, the first bi-state agency created by the United States Congress to address environmental issues.

 

However, the new TRPA creation did not stop the in-fighting.  The seemingly fatal flaw in the charters of all the new regional agencies was that their operations were to be funded by local area governments, and most long-existing governmental entities simply refused to fund the CTRPA, NTRPA and TRPA newcomers, thus completely eviscerating them.  Had the Supreme Courts of California and Nevada not intervened to rule that local governments were required to fund the new Agencies, they all would probably have been still-born.    

 

Importantly, the new TRPA had actual governing authority, not just the limited planning authority of the earlier incarnations of regional planning commissions.  The new TRPA could actually overrule development decisions made by local governing authorities. 

 

Unfortunately, the creation of TRPA did not quell the sometimes-violent disputes regarding development.  The TRPA got off to an extremely shaky start, leading both opponents and advocates to conclude that the Agency would probably be ineffectual, or even short-lived.  The Agency dragged its feet incessantly, clearly operating on a completely different time schedule than land owners and developers in the Tahoe Basin.  It took the TRPA 15 years from its inception to produce its first Regional Plan in 1984, and that Plan was so poorly conceived that it was rejected out of hand by environmental and pro-development groups alike and invalidated by the Courts.  The result was that by the mid 1980’s things were considerably worse as the Courts issued injunctions shutting down all development.  Chaos ensued until warring parties could come to some sort of a consensus on a case-by-case basis.  The local construction economy was decimated. 

 

Controversy continues to this day.  Almost no one who owns property or lives in the Tahoe Basin is neutral regarding the TRPA.  There are strong and vocal advocates, and equally strong and vocal detractors.  One thing is certain, the TRPA has stunted growth in the Tahoe Basin and has significantly driven up costs to own property and live in the Basin.  The Tahoe Basin today is composed of more than 90% public lands and has a permanent population of less than 100,000.  It was this politically charged atmosphere that Viso faced as he prepared his development plans in 1969 and 1970.

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