​

                 “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over” – Mark Twain

 

In light of its geographic location straddling two states, California and Nevada, with its estimated 39 trillion gallons of life-sustaining water tantalizingly close to the driest state in the United States (Nevada), and with the headwaters of its single outlet, the Truckee River, located in California, it was inevitable that Lake Tahoe would be the subject of endless water wars throughout the years.  A massive 173 billion gallons of water flows through the Lake each year, fed by 63 tributaries, 20 of which are in Nevada and the rest in California, and by rain and snowfall directly into the Lake.  The water flows into the Truckee River (known to the Washoe Indians as wakhu wa’t’a) and meanders through California and Nevada before reaching Pyramid Lake in Nevada, from which there is no outlet.  Despite this massive flow of water into the Truckee, the greatest loss of water from the Lake is due to evaporation.  It is estimated that 75% of the volume of the Lake at any point in time will ultimately be lost to evaporation.  

 

Not long after Lake Tahoe was “discovered” by John C. Fremont, industrious settlers set about trying to find a way to harness the abundance of Lake water.  Until a dam was built, lake water would rage, unchecked, into the Truckee River during the spring runoff months and then slow to a trickle during the rest of the year as the water level fell below the natural rim of the Lake.  Since Tahoe was a natural lake formed by volcanic and then glacier action about 2 million years earlier, there was no regulation of its level, which had varied substantially over its life.

 

The first attempt to control the level of the Lake and the flow rate into the Truckee River occurred in 1870 when engineer Alexis von Schmidt built a timber and rock crib dam on the Truckee River near Tahoe City for the purpose of storing water to supply a “grand aqueduct” to San Francisco.  The plan fizzled financially, but ignited fierce opposition by local residents and farmers in western Nevada.  The Tahoe Water Wars had begun.     

 

After the failure of von Schmidt’s plan, The California Legislature stepped in and allowed the Donner Boom and Logging Company, a subsidiary of the Central Pacific Railroad, to take control of von Schmidt’s dam for the purposes of regulating flow so that logs could be floated to mills in Truckee and to create electrical power.  But this plan also faced fierce opposition from both Lake Tahoe property owners when higher than natural Lake levels caused shoreline erosion and flooding, and downstream farmers when the Truckee River flows were limited in order to store water so that logs could be floated during the drier summer months and to maintain a steady flow for electricity generation.  There were regular confrontations, many of them physical, especially after timber operations wound down with the exhaustion of the silver deposits in Nevada.  The very presence of a dam requires a plan to operate it that must meet the needs of all of the stakeholders of the water resource in order to avoid conflicts.  Since there was no such plan for Lake Tahoe enforced by any governmental entity, the owner of the dam at any point in time set the rules to suit his purposes.

 

When the current dam was constructed in 1913, a new owner, with different objectives set a new operating plan.  The 1913 dam is a concrete buttress design with 17 gates for water flow regulation.  The new owner, the Truckee River General Electric Company, had as its primary objective to regulate the flow rate of the Truckee River to provide a reliable flow of water to a series of hydroelectric plants the company had built along the river.  This necessitated storing spring runoff water behind the dam so that it could be released slowly to keep the hydroelectric plants operating during the drier summer and fall months.  The plan worked well and soon entrepreneurs had established processing and manufacturing plants along the Truckee that were dependent on the flow of cheap electricity from the hydroelectric plants, and thus Truckee River water flow.  This new dam had created a new set of stakeholders with divergent, and often contradictory, needs: Lake Tahoe homeowners, electricity customers, farmers in Nevada, growing municipalities in Nevada, and Paiute Indians dependent on fishing Pyramid Lake.  Another new constituency was created later in 1913 when a group of prominent property owners created the Tahoe Protection Association to preserve the Lake’s beauty and ecology, the first environmentalist group at Lake Tahoe.

 

The United States Government stepped into the middle of this regulation quagmire in 1915 by taking control of the dam from its owner through the Reclamation Act.  This Act was part of an audacious plan developed by U. S. Senator Francis G. Newlands (Nevada) to appropriate Lake Tahoe water to encourage agricultural expansion in western Nevada.  A native of Natchez, Mississippi and a prominent Democrat, Newlands recognized political opportunity in the chaos surrounding the regulation of Lake Tahoe water and pushed forcefully for the federal government to take a central role in more equitably distributing this resource.  Backed by President Theodore Roosevelt, Newlands’ plan required that the Federal Government be in full control of the water behind the new dam in Tahoe City, and thus control its operation with the primary purpose of meeting downstream agricultural interests.  The plan failed.  The supply of water from Tahoe through the Truckee was too unreliable.  Farmers had invested in land that was now bone dry. The Pyramid Lake fishery was decimated by downstream diversion dams that caused the Lake to drop 70 feet and suffer a rise in salinity that devastated the Paiute Indian tribe dependent on that fishery. And, ironically, lakefront owners were angry with the Lake level being maintained too high in an attempt to even flows downstream throughout the year.  Everyone was unhappy!  The constantly higher Lake levels also made downstream users subject to greater flooding during the spring runoff when the dam could not hold the excess water.

 

The water wars continued to simmer for many years, but were brought to a boil in 1930 by the effects of a drought that had lasted more than 10 years.  The Lake level had fallen below its natural rim and the Truckee River was dry.  After several years of operating large pumps to provide some water downstream, locals began to vandalize the pumps limiting their effectiveness.  With their backs to the wall, Nevada farming interests sent heavy machinery to Tahoe City with armed guards to dig a trench through the natural rim and allow water to flow.  Both sides were armed and looking for a fight.  Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, at least temporarily, when a court order halted all operations.  Tensions remained high for weeks as locals guarded the dam site after rumors circulated that the farming interests planned to dynamite the Lake rim.

 

Suddenly a possible solution appeared.  A University of Nevada professor, Dr. James E. Church announced that he had developed a snowpack density measurement system that could measure the water content in the Tahoe Basin snowpack.  He found that a good correlation existed between the late March water equivalent in the snowpack and the amount of the spring rise in Lake level.  This tool gave dam operators a very useful tool to regulate water release from the dam by anticipating, rather than simply reacting to, spring runoff, and thereby attempt to mollify all the stakeholders.  With this tool in hand, political leaders set about to codify the dam operations.  The 1935 Truckee River Agreement, which was ratified by the Truckee River Final Decree in 1944, set the maximum allowable Lake level at 6,229.1 feet above sea level.  The Agreement specified that the dam operator would release water as the level of the Lake reached the maximum limit, regardless of the effects this release might have on downstream properties. 

 

This was a breakthrough for Lakefront property owners since they could now plan and build with the confidence that a structure would not be flooded by a Lake level above 6,229.1 feet.  The natural rim of the Lake at 6223.00 feet established the operating range for dam operators.  Thus, the Lake Tahoe dam was to be operated so that the Lake level remained within this 6.1-foot range, releasing water throughout the year to satisfy downstream agricultural needs.

 

Of course, Mother Nature is in full control of the actual lower Lake level, which has often fallen below the natural rim leaving the Truckee River dry. Although Dr. Church is credited with ending the Tahoe water wars, adequately controlling the Lake level within a narrow 6.1-foot window in our erratic western climate remains an ongoing challenge.   Despite wide swings between drought and heavy, wet winters over the past 90 years, with the resultant variations in annual flows into the Lake, the Historical Surface Elevation chart shown below indicates that except for just a few instances, the dam operation goals have been met, especially the upper limit goals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, it is tempting to conclude that due to the long-term oscillation in Lake levels due to weather patterns, had a higher upper limit been set in 1935, several more recent periods of the Lake falling below its natural rim, and the Truckee going dry, might have been avoided.  But, the possibility of such a change is “water through the dam” today as vested interests have substantial investments around the Lake predicated on the 1935 upper limit.

 

The practical result of the dam operation plan is that downstream agricultural interests have top priority, with Lake Tahoe lakefront owners as a close secondary interest.  As much water as possible is to be provided to agricultural uses without causing shoreline damage on Lake Tahoe.  There are no specific provisions for the protection of wildlife, fish, other properties along the Truckee River or Pyramid Lake or for the general environment.  The most important missing priority is flood control.  All these tertiary interests have received increased interest over the past few years, and may, at some point, become codified in a new operations plan.

​