Environmental groups appeal Lake Tahoe plan ruling

RENO — Two environmental groups are appealing a federal judge’s ruling upholding a regional plan regulating development in the Lake Tahoe Basin straddling the Nevada-California line.

Earthjustice filed the appeal this week with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the Sierra Club and Friends of the West Shore.

The organizations are challenging the decision April 7 by U.S. District Judge John Mendez of Sacramento, Calif., to uphold the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s regional plan update.

Their appeal, filed Wednesday, says the environmental impact statement on the plan failed to analyze its negative impacts on soil conservation and water and air quality. It also argues that the agency made erroneous findings that the plan would protect Tahoe’s environment.

“The agency’s strange strategy to protect Lake Tahoe and its surrounding landscape from the damage caused by excessive urbanization over past decades is to promote even more development,” Earthjustice attorney Wendy Park said in a statement. “We will continue our fight to protect the lake from the misguided actions of the agency charged with protecting and restoring its environment.”

Agency officials, in a statement, said they would continue to implement the plan that took nearly a decade to complete.

“TRPA is confident the regional plan will accelerate Lake Tahoe’s restoration and support sustainable communities,” said Joanne Marchetta, the agency’s executive director. “While the appeal makes its way through the legal process, we will continue to put the substantial environmental benefits of the plan into place.”

According to the agency, the new plan authorizes less than half as much new development as the 1987 regional plan, maintains growth caps and urban boundary limits on all development, bars new high-rises, and authorizes no new hotel units.

But the two environmental groups say the plan will allow an additional 3,200 residential units and 200,000 square feet of new commercial floor space in the Tahoe Basin.

The organizations sued the agency in February 2013, only two months after the regional plan was approved with the support of a coalition of Lake Tahoe residents and legislative and business leaders.

The environmental group League to Save Lake Tahoe also backed the plan, saying it contains multiple safeguards that require restoration and environmental improvements with any new development.