tahoe regional planning agency

Litter. Dog poop. Unsafe fires. Bear safety. These are just some of the issues impacting our Region. Today, the Lake Tahoe Outreach Committee unveiled the Take Care™ campaign to help reduce these impacts and promote a more responsible use of our great outdoors.

The campaign was designed for use in outreach efforts by public agencies, private businesses and nonprofit organizations in the Region. Aimed at residents and visitors, the campaign is a series of reminders that poke fun at the mistakes we all make when we’re not paying attention.

Let us start with a common interactive scenario for Lake Tahoe:

40 years ago a family came to Lake Tahoe, walked to the water’s edge of a very full lake (on that day in 1975, Tahoe’s surface elevation was at 6228 feet), and said, “What a beautiful lake! Look how clear it is!” and they spent the rest of their vacation not knowing the environmental direction that Tahoe was heading.

There are a few days left to nominate Lake Tahoe projects for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) 2014 Best in the Basin awards program.

The Best in the Basin awards program is in its 25th year. It was created to recognize projects that demonstrate exceptional planning and design and compatibility with the environment and TRPA guidelines.

The most innovative South Shore businesses will exhibit at the 2015 Business EXPO: Innovation in the Basin on Friday, March 27. The largest business and networking event of the year, Tahoe Chamber’s Business EXPO includes 100 local businesses ranging from restaurants and resorts to recreation providers to retailers. The event includes food and drink tastings, giveaways and a new networking lounge sponsored by the City of South Lake Tahoe, Winters Construction Group and Red Carpet Events and Design.

The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team is hosting two workshops for local defensible space and tree removal contractors, to be held on the following dates:

North Shore: April 23, 2015 – 8:30-11:00am, North Tahoe FPD Station 51, 222 Fairway Dr., Tahoe City, CA 96145

South Shore: April 30, 2015 – 8:30 – 11:00am, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 128 Market St., Stateline, NV 89449

Illegal tree cutting at a South Lake Tahoe hotel and approval of the Heavenly Mountain Resort Epic Discovery Project are just two of the agenda items for the next Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) Governing Board meeting.

The TRPA board meeting will be held on March 25 at the Chateau in Incine Village and on March 26 at the agency's office in Stateline.

A Tahoe Talks Brown Bag Lunch Series recently launched offers a monthly forum for people to discuss and learn more about ways to strengthen communities, make towns safer for bicyclists and pedestrians, and help protect Lake Tahoe’s amazing natural resources.

Lunches are held monthly at Lake Tahoe Community College. They cover topics ranging from transportation to the economy and the environment, and offer a comfortable, low-key setting for people to discuss and learn about those issues. The events are free to the public.

After five years overseeing nearly 40 percent of Utah's land, Juan Palma retires Friday as the state director for the Bureau of Land Management.

While many state and local leaders would rather evict the federal agency from Utah, they don't feel the same way about Palma.

An easygoing leader who was able to navigate the fraught politics of public lands management in Utah, Palma is respected by environmentalists and oil and gas developers alike.

South Lake Tahoe may soon be one less aging motel along the main stretch in town. On Tuesday, the Placer County supervisors gave staff the go ahead to purchase the A & A Lake Tahoe Inn for $1.425 million. The county wants to have the motel's 34 tourist accommodation units (TAUs) so they can add hotel rooms at the north end of Lake Tahoe.

The south shore motel rests in a stream sensitive zone. If the purchase goes through, Placer County would give the motel to the California Conservancy for demolition and restoration while keeping the TAUs.

Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is accepting nominations for Lake Spirit Awards to honor real people making real progress protecting Lake Tahoe. Members of the public are encouraged to nominate exemplary members of the community who are going above and beyond the call of duty to protect the beauty and clarity of the Lake.

Top experts will converge at Lake Tahoe in September for the annual meeting of the Western Regional Panel on Aquatic Nuisance Species, hosted by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

Taking place September 2-4, the annual meeting brings together officials from across the country in the fight against western expansion of aquatic invasive species. Participants will learn from informative lectures and discussions to foster coordination of aquatic invasive species management among western states. This event is open to the public.

The City of South Lake Tahoe is accepting applications from community members who are interested in serving as a the City's layperson on the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's advisory planning commission.

It's not every day you see a 2,200 pound, 26-foot tall guitar being driven along Highway 50 from Sacramento into South Lake Tahoe. Nor does one normally see a huge crane lifting a metal guitar over 100 feet to be placed onto a base in front of a South Shore casino.

Another step in the right direction for the economic revitalization of South Lake Tahoe and the Highway 50 corridor occurred at the site of the new Hard Rock Casino Hotel and Casino this week.

The old Horizon sign came down and the Hard Rock sign went up.

This sign is just part of the $60 million renovation going on at the site of the original Sahara Tahoe.

There may be a duel this winter over hotel rooms around Lake Tahoe.

Placer County is interested in paying about $3.7 million to buy hotels from private owners and demolish them in the city of South Lake Tahoe, which is in El Dorado County.

South Lake Tahoe doesn't want to lose the hotels, along with the important associated sales and room taxes.

Placer County wants the hotels so it can open development of new lodging along Placer County's north shore of Lake Tahoe, which hasn't had a new hotel built since 1959.

Tahoe In Depth, the environmental newspaper that the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency created two years ago to help improve awareness and understanding of lake issues, was recognized with a Silver Spike award at the Sierra Nevada Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America annual awards ceremony on Thursday.
Silver Spike awards recognize the northern Sierra region’s best public relations and communications campaigns, according to Anne McMillin, President of the Sierra Nevada Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

As the keynote speaker at last month’s National Workshop on Large Landscape Conservation in Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell emphasized the central role collaboration must play for America to protect its natural resources, balance economic needs, and address emerging environmental challenges such as climate change.

“We are moving into an era of epic collaboration,” Jewell said, explaining that regional partnerships across jurisdictional boundaries are more important than ever for the federal department that manages 20 percent of our nation’s land.

Several key public service positions have been filled the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA).

Tom Lotshaw has been hired to work as TRPA’s Public Information Officer. He replaces Jeff Cowen, who worked for TRPA in that and other roles for eight years.

Lotshaw graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor’s degree in public affairs journalism and has seven years of newspaper reporting experience. He worked most recently as a reporter for the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana, and as a reporter and photographer for the Tahoe Daily Tribune.

The Lake Tahoe Unified School District (LTUSD) was awarded over $150,000 to look into providing safer, more walkable and bikeable off highway routes around South Tahoe Middle School (STMS), Bijou Park and Lake Tahoe Community College. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) awarded the grant as part of their $500,000 "On Our Way" program grants.

Another public workshop to get feedback from the community will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 19, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the STMS Multi-purpose room.

Divers are mobilizing at the mouth of Emerald Bay to start removing 5 acres of rubber mats that were laid on the lake bottom two years ago for a pilot project to control Asian clam populations in the area.

Divers are anticipated to be working in the water through November, so boaters are asked to exercise caution when entering and exiting Emerald Bay and obey a no-wake zone that extends 600 feet from shore at Lake Tahoe.

There were two workshops held on Thursday at South Tahoe Middle School to help identify the safe and unsafe routes students take to school each day on foot or on their bikes. From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., school officials, staff from Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), the Lake Tahoe Sustainability Mobility group and members of the public were stationed at locations on the streets around the school to monitor traffic, car speeds and safe routes the students were taking to get to school.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) approved two grow domes to be installed at Sierra House Elementary School. Ground is being broken on the project area this weekend and the project is expected to be completed by the end of November.

The five month long grading season in Lake Tahoe ends on October 15 and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) has made it easier for builders to request an extension.

TRPA now has an online system to handle the requests in order to improve customer service and eliminate the need to people to drive to their office.

Grading season for construction projects in the Lake Tahoe Basin extends from May 1 to October 15. Soil disturbance during wet conditions can harm the lake’s water quality. Outside of the grading season, soil disturbance activities generally require an exception.

“A breakdown can pave the way for a breakthrough,” California Governor Jerry Brown said at the Lake Tahoe Summit on August 19.

The governor was speaking about the challenges people face in looking beyond their differences for common ground, whether that’s working to craft the $7.5 billion water bond California voters will consider in November or working across state lines to protect and restore Lake Tahoe.