Tahoe is one of one — an enormous, ancient, deep lake ringed by mountain peaks and extinct volcanoes. Though the place is truly singular, humans have carved it up into a dizzying number of territories, localities, zones, and jurisdictions.

Some 80 different decision-making authorities intersect with the Lake, a byzantine collection of local, regional, state, and federal bodies. With such an unwieldy assortment of entities having some say in matters, accomplishing anything with a regional focus requires one unifying voice.

That’s why Nevada and California established the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) in 1969, an extraordinary act that required the consent of Congress. The League to Save Lake Tahoe (League) was proud to support those foundational early efforts, which created an environmental organization with land use authority crossing state lines. To this day, few governing bodies in the country have such a wide-ranging remit of oversight, enforcement, and regulatory duties.

More than 50 years later, the League still supports TRPA as the agency addresses the litany of environmental threats and challenges posed by climate change, population growth, and development in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Our team at the League takes pride in calling ourselves the watchdog for Lake Tahoe. But ultimately, TRPA is the entity with the authority and tools to ensure that environmental regulations are implemented and enforced. And that’s what Tahoe’s communities and environment depend on the agency to do.

In recent months, we have seen TRPA step up their efforts in the three areas that are most critical to their mission and the League’s mission to Keep Tahoe Blue:

• Updating Tahoe’s environmental thresholds.
• Providing clear explanations of how all TRPA decisions — from plan amendments, to project approvals, to permitting changes — achieve and maintain those thresholds.
• Only approving plans or projects where permitting conditions, environmental regulations, and other mechanisms can be enforced and regulated by TRPA.

We clearly place a lot of stock in the environmental and social thresholds that direct TRPA.  These are the science-based standards used since 1981 to measure how the Tahoe Basin is doing at protecting and improving environmental health and community well-being — allowing us to live, work, and recreate here while keeping it the unspoiled natural wonder it is. The thresholds deliver benefits to everyone, like clean air and water. But those benchmarks need to be updated, as they were written more than 40 years ago. TRPA has begun the update process and completed it for several important thresholds, such as the Stream Environment Zone threshold, yet the majority have not been updated since they were first created.

In February, we were heartened to see TRPA lead a more open public engagement process as part of its regular threshold evaluation. That outreach effort, which is conducted every four years, was guided in part by independent analysis from the Tahoe Science Advisory Council. Scientific peer review is an essential element of the process, one we hope will lead to threshold updates more quickly this time around.

Additionally, the League was similarly encouraged by the most recent TRPA Governing Board meeting where there was a discussion of plans to create a first-ever Reporting and Accountability Team, a key admission that implementation of the TRPA’s plans and enforcement of its permits has not always been consistent.

That’s why we strongly support the creation of the new Reporting and Accountability Team, which represents a dedicated effort to monitor permit conditions, ensure that environmental mitigations are being enacted, and report to the public transparently and frequently. If permit conditions aren’t being followed, TRPA has indicated that enforcement will be a priority.

As Tahoe’s oldest and largest nonprofit environmental advocacy organization, a central part of the League’s role is to make sure that the TRPA fulfills its mission, first by building on the progress it has made in recent months.

We are strong advocates of updating TRPA’s outdated environmental standards, but the League understands all too well those thresholds are only effective if every decision — on plans, development projects, and enforcement — are made with the sole focus of achieving and maintaining the thresholds. Environmental protection and community revitalization efforts do not happen when a project is approved or when a permit is authorized. These gains are realized when the standards are effectively implemented and enforced, allowing the public and Tahoe’s environment to truly benefit from the changes.

All too often in the past, we have seen lofty project standards ignored or avoided. Or, it has been unclear how these benchmarks are being met, and how they’ll help the local community and environment.

TRPA has assured us that from here on out, things are different. We will hold them to their word on that commitment to our community, to the environment, and to the two states who share this natural wonder.