Notes from those who believe the rules apply to everyone
Anyone who chooses to live at Lake Tahoe receives an education in regulation almost immediately. It usually begins with something small. A tree trimmed too aggressively. A shed placed a few feet out of bounds. A modest deck addition that exceeds allowable coverage by an amount measurable with a tape measure and a raised eyebrow.
The response is swift and unmistakable. A letter arrives. Then another. There are citations to code sections, deadlines, fees, and instructions for restoration. The tone is never poetic and rarely flexible. It is administrative and absolute. You are out of compliance. You will correct it.
Most residents accept this without much protest because they’ve been told — repeatedly and convincingly — that such vigilance is what protects the lake. Tahoe is fragile. Clarity depends on controlling disturbance. Even small amounts of sediment matter. Every square foot of coverage counts. The shorezone, especially, is treated as something close to sacred.
And so people comply. They redesign projects. They abandon plans. They write checks they hadn’t budgeted for. They do it because they believe the system is fair and the sacrifice is shared.
That belief holds everything together.
Which is why what unfolded on one small point of shoreline over the past several years has been so clarifying.
For roughly eighteen months — not days or weeks, but months stacking into years — the steady percussion of jackhammers carried across Skyland Point. It became part of the landscape. The kind of sound you hear with your morning coffee and again at dusk. Large native boulders were broken apart and hauled away. Cement trucks came and went. Fresh concrete was poured in, on, and through the shorezone itself. Stairs were not simply repaired but relocated and enlarged. Landings appeared. Footprints expanded. Coverage grew in the very area the agency routinely describes as the most environmentally sensitive in the Basin.
Anyone who has ever been required to install Best Management Practices knows how carefully the rest of us are instructed to treat even the smallest disturbance. We are told to sweep dust from driveways so it doesn’t wash into the lake. We are warned that fine particles cloud the water and threaten clarity. We install filters, trenches, and rock armor to capture runoff measured in teaspoons.
And yet here were truckloads of pulverized rock and fresh cement being created directly in the shoreline, not adjacent to it, not “near” it, but on top of the very ground residents are typically told not to touch.
Naturally, neighbors assumed this level of activity must be permitted. An agency capable of citing someone for an unapproved patio stone would surely notice a year and a half of jackhammering.
Still, they did what residents are instructed to do. They documented. They photographed. They called. They emailed. They requested inspections. They met with staff. They followed the rules of engagement carefully and repeatedly. This was not a case of neighbors ignoring a problem and later regretting it. It was a case of neighbors engaging the system exactly as designed and waiting for it to function.
Eventually, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency acknowledged the obvious and issued a cease-and-desist order. Unauthorized shorezone work. Removal of earthen material. Concrete discharges. Additional coverage. On paper, it sounded decisive.
Residents familiar with the usual process recognized the script. Stop the work. Remove the illegal construction. Restore the site. Pay the penalty. Only after compliance do you talk about anything new.
This is the same script applied to homeowners who misplace a fence or overbuild a deck by a few feet.
But in this case, the next chapter took a more curious turn.
The concrete remained.
The expanded structures remained.
Restoration lingered somewhere in the future tense.
Months passed. Then more months. The issue was “under review.” Planning consulted Compliance. Compliance consulted Planning. Meetings occurred. Documents circulated. The violations, meanwhile, sat exactly where they had been created — in plain sight and in plain contact with the lake.
Then, rather than insisting that the shorezone be restored first, the agency began entertaining a new application for a substantial multi-parcel pier extending into the water from the same property.
For longtime residents, this was less innovative than educational. Many had not realized that being out of compliance might still qualify one for additional development. They had been operating under the simpler assumption that you fix violations before asking for more.
It turns out the order can be more flexible than advertised.
For those who have paid fines over minor infractions, the lesson lands with a certain irony. The system that moves quickly when someone adds a small shed seems capable of remarkable patience when the work involves jackhammers, concrete, and expanded shoreline structures. Small mistakes are urgent. Large ones are apparently complex.
None of this would raise eyebrows if Tahoe were an ordinary place. But residents accept strict oversight precisely because they believe it protects something extraordinary. That trust depends on consistency. When enforcement appears to depend on scale, influence, or stamina rather than the code itself, the moral authority behind the rules quietly erodes.
At that point, the regulations stop feeling like stewardship and start feeling optional — or worse, selective.
And once that happens, the lake isn’t the only thing that loses clarity.
-Dana Tibbitts
While presented as satire, the circumstances described are based on the actual, documented, present-tense experience of a Skyland homeowner and their formal interactions with TRPA enforcement and permitting staff. Only the tone has been fictionalized.