In the News

Lake Protection Efforts Seen as Model of Collaboration
date posted: April 22 2003

When President Clinton came to Lake Tahoe in 1997, he promised federal support and funding for a massive effort to clean up and preserve Lake Tahoe. At that time, the president stated that the cooperation and collaboration between local, state and federal government agencies, the business community, and individual citizens at Lake Tahoe was a model for how a community could pull together to solve regional problems.

Since that time, the already strong cooperation at Tahoe has grown stronger. The Lake Tahoe Environmental Improvement Program (EIP) has been endorsed and is now being funded by state and federal agencies, counties, cities, and local improvement districts. Two local groups who have encouraged this remarkable interagency collaboration are the Lake Tahoe Transportation and Water Quality Coalition and the Lake Tahoe Basin Executives.

In addition to these public efforts, the private sector also plays a crucial role in implementing the EIP. For example, thousands of private property owners are implementing best management practices (BMPs) around residences and businesses. Many individuals have also devoted hundreds of hours of volunteer time and made private donations to nonprofits working to protect the lake’s environment.

Two such individuals are local photographer and writer J.T. and Linde Ravize. They took a display of their remarkable photographs called “Hearts of Light” to the nation’s Capitol to remind legislators why preserving Lake Tahoe is so important. J.T. Ravize describes his trip as “just some private citizens saying this needs to happen. There was no funding for it, but the lake is depending on us, so we have to go to bat for the lake.”

Recent scientific surveys show that the majority of Tahoe residents agree that protection of Lake Tahoe’s environment is of paramount concern. In 2000, the Parasol Foundation’s $25,000 community needs assessment reported that protection of air and water quality was rated as the most important of all community needs at Lake Tahoe. An overwhelming 72.3 percent of residents said it was “very important” to increase efforts to protect air and water quality.

At the same time, many private citizens are unaware of what they can do to protect these resources. For this reason, many educators in the Lake Tahoe community are increasing efforts to help people become part of the solution to the lake’s problems. The Lake Tahoe Environmental Education Coalition (LTEEC) was formed in 2000 to help many groups and educators work together to improve the overall effectiveness of environmental education at Lake Tahoe. This coalition of 29 groups is supported and facilitated by University of California and University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. The guiding principles of LTEEC are coordination, cooperation and collaboration.

This group formed a steering committee and hired Heather Segale in 2001 to act as the lake’s environmental education coordinator. Since then, the number of collaborative environmental education events and the number of participants in these events has more than tripled. Subgroups of LTEEC are helping to introduce “place-based learning” and “service learning” to public schools, train citizen volunteers to monitor the water quality of local tributaries to the lake, and assist private property owners in creating affordable designs for BMPS required on all public and private lands in Lake Tahoe. One LTEEC subgroup organizes forums to encourage conversation among the lake’s many scientific researchers and to help them inform the public about their discoveries. Another subgroup creates TV news segments and articles such as this one to help the public understand the complex and sometimes bewildering array of regulations, public works (EIP) projects, and management practices that are being used to restore the lake’s health.

In the end, the lake will be on the road to recovery when the great majority of Tahoe residents and visitors take personal responsibility for our human impacts and join together to practice watershed stewardship. This will require a high level of public environmental literacy, and an equally strong commitment to make proper land management part of our way of life, and not someone else’s job.

Watch for “The Lake Tahoe Report” in the Tahoe World each Thursday, and tune in to KOLO-TV News Channel 8 Tuesdays at 5 p.m. to learn more. Next week see how local volunteers participate in stream monitoring activities and find out how you can get involved. “The Lake Tahoe Report” is a collaborative effort of the Lake Tahoe Environmental Education Coalition, University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, UC Davis and the USDA Forest Service. For more information, contact Heather Segale, University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, (775) 832-4138, or logon to www.lteec.org or www.unce.unr.edu.