PLACER COUNTY, Calif. – Multiple Tahoe based nonprofits filed a petition against Placer County and its Board of Supervisors on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023.

The petition alleges that several actions taken by the board during their Oct. 31 public meeting regarding the Tahoe Basin Area Plan, or TBAP, violated the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. This act requires public agencies to “look before they leap” by reviewing the potential environmental impacts of their actions before taking them, according to a California state website.

The TBAP serves as the zoning code for the Tahoe area of Placer County. It replaced all prior regulations, standards, and plans for the over 72 square-mile area when Placer adopted the plan in 2016. Kings Beach, Tahoe City, Carnelian Bay, Dollar Point, Sunnyside, Homewood, Tahoe Vista, and Tahoma all lie within the plan’s area.

---

---

Although Placer obtained an initial environmental impact report upon the 2016 adoption of the TBAP, nonprofits Friends of the West Shore, Tahoecleanair.org, and North Tahoe Preservation Alliance all say that substantial changes have occurred to the region since then and that Placer’s amendments could have substantial impacts to the environment, requiring another look at environmental impacts through a subsequent of supplemental environmental impact report.

Friends of West Shore Executive Director Ron Grassi, also a retired attorney, says the original environmental report to the TBAP was made, “in a different era in Lake Tahoe,” listing occurrences that have changed the lake since 2016, including the pandemic.

---

---

According to California Public Resources Code, CEQA requires a subsequent or supplement environmental impact report when substantial changes are proposed to a project or substantial changes in the project’s circumstances require revisions to the environmental impact report. The code also requires it when new information becomes available that could not have been known at the time of the original report that show new or substantially more severe significant impacts.

The code says if none of these three triggers exist with project changes, then the lead agency can use an addendum to make changes or additions to the prior report, which is what Placer did in providing their addendum to the 2016 Environmental Impact Report.

Placer conducted a public hearing about the changes on Oct. 16 and continued the item to Oct. 31 for decision. They provided a copy of the addendum and errata to the report in their Oct. 31 staff report, where no public comment was received. Placer provided an attachment within the Oct. 31 staff report with responses to the public comments from the Oct. 16 meeting, but allowed no public comment before taking the amending actions.

Placer says since public comment was provided Oct. 16, there was no obligation to received additional public comment on Oct. 31 before taking action.

Grassi says they normally don’t litigate on environment impact report issues because normally the agency does better.

“All we’re saying in this lawsuit,” Grassi explains, “is before you do it, follow the law.”

The Petition for Writ of Mandate filed by the groups’ attorney asks the court to order Placer to vacate and set aside the Oct. 31 amendments, provide a supplemental or subsequent environmental impact report, and suspend all activity that could change or alter the physical environment until the county has done so.

A ‘Trojan Horse’

Placer County says the amendments are minor changes to the TBAP and are meant to encourage new workforce housing, lodging, and to revitalize vacant store fronts in the town centers of Tahoe City and Kings Beach. They say they are not changes substantial enough to require another impact report because the changes are covered under the original report.

In terms of the minor changes, Grassi says this comes up a lot with government agencies proposing changes that they say are minor, “It’s an attempt to get us to lower our guard.”

Grassi says the reality is many of the proposed changes are substantial or have the potential to be, depending on how the agency uses them.

The conservation groups say that while they support policies for true affordable housing, the amendments don’t require or guarantee affordable housing or workforce housing and say in their petition that they instead “serve as a Trojan Horse in the name of ‘Economic Sustainability and Housing’ to incentivize developers and those eager to further exploit Tahoe’s scenic beauty for profit.” 

They allege the reason the amendments don’t guarantee affordable housing is because they allow developers to choose between multiple housing income categories—low, moderate, and achievable—without being mandated to build them in specific percentages.

This is a concern for the conservation groups because in their petition, they say one of these categories, the achievable housing, has no income cap and is not a recognized category in California.

Grassi says, “that type of housing is a made up word.”

In regards to the housing categories, Placer’s addendum states the definitions for affordable, moderate, and achievable housing come from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s Code. As of April 2023, the TRPA updated their achievable housing definition to no longer have an income requirement.

TRPA says they made this change based in part on feedback from the Tahoe Living Working Group. But to avoid misuse, the TRPA says they are requiring tenants to either meet the affordable or moderate housing income requirements or work at least 30 hours within the Truckee-Tahoe area.

TRPA adds they are working on updates to tighten the local employment requirements.

As far as Placer not requiring specific percentages of the different housing catagories, Grassi says, “They don’t want to be hemmed in. They don’t want to be committed.” 

Placer confirmed the amendments do not mandate percentages of different housing categories and the goal of the amendments was to incentivize construction of achievable housing. They say additional amendments to the Tahoe Basin Area Plan would have been required to mandate percentages of different housing categories.

Barriers to development

The conservation groups through their petition also say Placer removed barriers to development and approved population increasing amendments without looking at the environmental impact, purporting to focus on process, policy and code enforcement to encourage lodging, and mixed use developments.

The amendments implement recommendations from the Economic Sustainability Needs Assessment, done by an outside organization for Placer, to revitalize town centers and facilitate workforce housing, but the conservation groups say the amendments significantly change policies pertaining to many facets including scenic resources, vegetation, and land use.

One example of a land use change in the petition is an amendment adding different types of housing where it did not exist before, including extending outside the town centers, with no provided minimum parking requirements. They have concerns about the traffic and air quality impacts these changes could cause. Especially on more than one town center in the region, Grassi says, these effects would add up.

He says information on the capacity of the lake should assessed first through a subsequent report.

But Placer says incentivizing compact redevelopment in town centers would create walkable areas that would reduce vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions.

Placer also says their TBAP amendments are intended to remove barriers to achievable housing development because the existing code has not facilitated achievable housing to-date, but do not increase density or buildout potential or increase population.

This is because their initial TBAP environmental impact report already analyzed the hypothetical scenario of a full buildout potential, which they say is in reference to the maximum levels of development set by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

The conservation groups also allege there are a number of new projects lined up for development and the cumulative effect of those is not considered in the 2016 report. One such project is Boulder Bay and Grassi says it, with the six to seven other projects, could bring a few thousand people and cars to the area.

Placer’s errata to the 2016 report does identify over 500 units, both residential and tourist, associated with proposed projects that were not known in 2016 in the following projects:

• Tahoe Cedars
• Subdivision
• Boatworks at Tahoe
• 39 Degrees North
• Dollar Creek Crossing
• Tahoe Cedars Subdivision
• Boatworks at Tahoe
• 39 Degrees North
• Dollar Creek Crossing

However, Placer says the cumulative impact of these projects was also considered under the buildout model evaluated in the 2016 report. So although the projects aren’t specifically identified in the original environmental impact report, Placer says their cumulative impacts have been considered.

Accounting for COVID changes

The petition also outlines growth spurred by the pandemic as another substantial change to the circumstances and an unforeseeable change to the area that requires a subsequent environmental impact report. It also attributes growth to an increase in tourism from the Bay Area.

“A lot of people, in fact, who wanted to work in their homes,” Grassi says, “learned that they could be up in the mountains, pretty much away from the virus and also working.”

They go on to highlight increases in growth in surrounding areas like Truckee, Reno, and Carson City have impacted the Tahoe Basin as well.

They consider this new information that effects the traffic, air, quality, noise, wildfires and evacuation that need to be addressed in an additional report.

Placer says that growth generally was evaluated and anticipated in the original report, again referring to the full buildout of the TBAP, but say there have been relatively few new development projects since 2016 within the Placer County portion of the basin, so there has not been substantial growth in terms of development. Instead, what people are seeing is increased traffic, but say traffic is not a measurable impact under CEQA.

Wildfire concerns

The groups also contend that Placer failed to consider the increase in frequency of fires as new information as well as changed circumstances requiring the additional report.

They say since 2016, the basin has seen significant wildfire and an evacuation crisis that was not addressed or anticipated in 2016.

They worry the TBAP changes will facilitate and incentive growth that will exasperate the risk of wildfire and an evacuation crisis.

They also state that the changes in housing types and density could strain emergency evacuations as well and although they admit level of service is no longer analyzed under CEQA, could increase traffic congestion and public safety. They point out as an example, the addition of roundabouts in Kings Beach causing a reduction in lanes on State Route 28 from four to two lanes.

Placer responded to this concern in their Oct. 31 staff report where they say the changes do not increase density and reiterated to the Tribune, that this was evaluated under the full build-out.

The petition also references the California Attorney General’s 2022 Best Practices for Analyzing and Mitigating Impacts of Development Projects Under the California Environmental Quality Act, wherein he provides guidance for designing projects that minimize impacts to wildfire ignitions and other related subjects, including evacuation. The Attorney General’s document says that eight of the 10 largest California fires since 1932 were in the last decade.

The petition says, “As this new information and data regarding wildfires and wildfire evacuation in California was not available at the time of approval of the TBAP, the County’s failure to consider it and address it in a subsequent EIR constitutes a prejudicial abuse of discretion and is contrary to law.”

Placer’s staff report says the Attorney General’s document is a guidance document and does not constitute new factual information. They say the wildfire risk has not changed, that it and climate change, were assessed in the initial report.

Further, Placers staff report says that wildfire risks were identified and analyzed in the TBAP and the plan requires projects to comply with fire mitigation polices like defensible space and utilization of fire resistant materials.

The county also contends that measures were adopted in that original plan for evacuation polices and that they added a new policy requiring new developments to prepare and implement an emergency preparedness and evacuation plan.

In their response to the public’s concern about evacuation measures, Placer County Lieutenant Ty Conners offered written response on east Placer’s evacuation measures outlining their procedures and saying, “The Placer County Sheriff’s Office collaborates with allied agencies and is confident in the effectiveness of our methods. Regardless of the time of year when tourist traffic may be heightened, our methods and evacuation plans will remain consistent.”

Placer plans on responding to the conservation groups’ petition. They say they can file their response after the administrative record is certified and after the conservation groups file their brief, noting it could take months.

The attorney for the conservation groups says that no hearing has been scheduled yet and will not take place until after administrative record is certified and briefs submitted.

Placer told the tribune, “The filing of the lawsuit is unfortunate since it impedes the efforts of the county and the community in those areas.  We are in the process of evaluating the lawsuit and continue to seek ways to improve conditions within the basin for county residents.”