| #e.21875 | Wednesday 2:45PM to 4:00PM
October 10,
2012 | CM | 1.25 |
Charting the Path to Lake Tahoe’s Future: The Lake Tahoe Regional Plan Update APA Nevada ChapterLas Vegas, NV Lake Tahoe’s famed clarity and alpine setting has made it a popular destination for visitors and residents for more than a century. However, human activity and rapid development altered the watershed and adversely impacted the Lake’s water resources. Conservationists lobbying for environmental protection helped lead to the formation of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) in 1969, when the United States Congress ratified a Bi-State Compact put forth by California and Nevada to create a regional planning agency to oversee development, adopt environmental threshold carrying capacities and maintain a Regional Plan that establishes a balance between the natural and human-made environment. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency exemplifies applied watershed management where the agency’s jurisdiction closely mirrors the boundaries of the resource it intends to protect. Contained within its boundary are two states, five counties, and one city.
The last major update to the Lake Tahoe Regional Plan occurred in 1987, when planning strategies focused on growth management – a necessary foundation for environmental protection in the Region. Today, unintended consequences of the 1987 plan policies have left Lake Tahoe lagging behind other destination communities with aging infrastructure in need of environmental redevelopment. Today’s circumstances differ from the past and a new focus is needed to make the next leap in environmental and community improvement. TRPA is currently in the process of updating the Regional Plan to accommodate economic growth and vitality while ensuring that protective measures are taken to maintain a healthy watershed. The challenges of reaching a compromise between numerous and diverse stakeholders vested in Lake Tahoe’s future extended the update process.
Partly in response to the delay and adding to the pressure, Nevada passed Senate Bill 271, which provides a hard and fast deadline to complete the Regional Plan Update or Nevada would withdraw from the Bi-State Compact. Tahoe’s varied stakeholders all share the basic interest of protecting Lake Tahoe’s unique environment and the planning process over the past six months focused on bringing stakeholders together, which resulted in the release of a draft Plan on April 25, 2012 with final adoption on schedule for December, 2012.
Planning in a high profile sensitive area like Lake Tahoe involves reconciling competing interests at the federal, state and local level. This session informs planners on the challenges of bringing disparate points of view together and how to avoid planning gridlock when trying to keep the planning process moving forward. Planners will learn about Tahoe’s unique setting, the strict environmental standards in place to protect it and the need for adaptive management to address unintended consequences of existing regulations. The session will hear from various stakeholders, including local jurisdictions, the private sector and the environmental community, to discuss their perspectives on participating in the Regional Plan Update Process and the challenges of finding the essential agreements and compromises needed for moving Tahoe forward.
More Instructors: Patrick Dobbs Patrick Dobbs worked in the TRPA’s Current Planning Division for five years before being reassigned to Regional Plan Update Team in January. His responsibilities include review and administration of TRPA’s Code of Ordinances to reflect updated policies. He has a degree in physical geography and enjoys snowboarding and triathlons. Lewis Feldman Lew Feldman practices land use and real estate law in the Tahoe Basin and has represented private developers including Heavenly Mountain Resort, Marriott Resorts, Edgewood Companies, Boulder Bay, Tahoe Beach Club, and JMA Ventures, as well as land use projects within the Basin, including the Ski Run Redevelopment Project, Trendwest Resorts, Tahoe Environmental Research Center, Heavenly Village Redevelopment Project, and the Edgewood Lodge and Golf Course Project. Lew graduated from Pepperdine University and obtained his law degree from Loyola Marymount. He is a member of the California and Nevada State Bars, and the real estate and environmental law sections of the CA State Bar. He is admitted to the US District Courts in California and Nevada, the US Court of Appeal-9th Circuit, and the US Supreme Court. Lew has served as special counsel to TRPA, qualified as an expert witness concerning TRPA matters and, most recently, served as a member of the California and Nevada Bi-State Regional Plan Update Consultation Committee at the request of John Laird, Secretary/CA Natural Resources Agency, and Leo Drozdoff, Director/NV Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Darcie Goodman-Collins Darcie Goodman-Collins, PhD is the Executive Director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, Tahoe’s oldest environmental advocacy organization. Darcie earned her Ph.D. at UC Santa Barbara’s Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, where her dissertation topic explored how environmental restoration and science can integrate with community engagement and public policy. Most recently, Dr. Goodman-Collins served as Habitat Restoration Director at Save the Bay, where she developed and implemented science, policy, and community-based strategies to ensure that 100,000 acres of San Francisco Bay wetland habitat will be restored by 2020. She was the founder of Shorelines and Watersheds, a non-profit based in Santa Barbara that focuses on protection, community engagement and collaborative restoration of wetlands along the coast. She also has taught Graduate level Environmental Negotiations courses and ran a citizen science program focusing on stream water monitoring. Darcie participated as a key environmental stakeholder on the bi-state consultation process for the Lake Tahoe Regional Plan Update and continues to engage in productive collaborative discussions in the Basin. Brandy McMahon AICP Brandy McMahon, AICP, Senior Planner, has worked in the Douglas County Community Development Department, Planning Division, since 2005. She has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and M.A. in Social Science in “Environment and Community” from Humboldt State University. She has served as the Douglas County Planning Representative on the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) Advisory Planning Commission (APC) since 2009 and has been actively involved in the TRPA Regional Plan Update. She loves reading, traveling, and spending time outdoors with her family and friends. Shay Navarro Shay Navarro is a Senior Planner with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency working on the Lake Tahoe Regional Plan Update. She holds Masters Degrees in City and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from UC Berkeley. Before moving to Tahoe, Shay worked as an Urban Planner for Berkeley firm Design Community and Environment. In her spare time, Shay is the chair of the Joint Powers Authority Bicycle Committee for the City of South Lake Tahoe and El Dorado County, which prioritizes where trail maintenance funding is spent. (15 Ratings)
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