[Water_news] 4. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATER QUALITY - 9/5/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

September 5, 2007

 

4. Water Quality -

 

 

 

HEALING THE LAKE

A key battle in the effort to restore Tahoe's once-pristine waters to crystal clarity is being waged in little-known marshland on the Upper Truckee River

San Francisco Chronicle – 9/5/07

By Peter Fimrite, staff writer

 

Bruce Eisner tromped past a half-dozen geese lolling in the water, marched across the muddy shoreline and stopped on the grassy bank of the Upper Truckee River.

 

It was a brilliant warm day at Lake Tahoe, the forested mountains rising spectacularly all around, but Eisner was focused on a bit of scenery that few people on the bustling south shore even notice.

 

As the program manager for the California Tahoe Conservancy, his work and passion is the restoration of the Upper Truckee Marsh, the largest wetlands system in the Lake Tahoe Basin and the source of about a third of all the water - and most of the sediment - that flows into the famous lake.

 

"That's the man-made channel," he said, pointing from the bank upriver toward a long, straight water-filled gully carved into the earth. "The river was altered so significantly, it became like a ditch."

 

The marsh and river system, next to the Tahoe Keys Marina in the heart of South Lake Tahoe, is where one of the biggest pushes is being made to restore the water of Lake Tahoe to the crystal-clear prism it was before development brought pollution.

 

The effort is, in many respects, a symbol for the entire region, which is still suffering from the effects of massive home and commercial construction from the 1950s through the 1970s. Scientists believe the buildings, asphalt and lack of proper drainage are responsible for sending pollutants flowing into the once-pristine lake, causing algae buildup and drastically reducing water clarity over the past 40 years.

 

The drainage issues are exacerbated by vehicles spewing air pollution and dripping oil and gasoline and by conflagrations like the recent Angora Fire, which consumed large sections of forest that was overgrown as a result of fire-protection activities over the past century.

 

More than 50 public and private organizations, led by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and the Tahoe Conservancy, have joined forces over the past decade to address the problem, creating the Lake Tahoe Environmental Improvement Program. It has become a national campaign, fueled in part by the ubiquitous "Keep Tahoe Blue" bumper stickers from the League to Save Lake Tahoe.

 

One of the top priorities is the Upper Truckee Marsh, which once covered 1,100 acres. It was partially filled with tons of dirt, and the river was channelized by developers starting in the 1950s. The plan was to build a massive lakeside housing development, but lawsuits blocked the way.

 

Years of litigation resulted in the 1988 purchase by the Tahoe Conservancy of 208 acres and then, in 2000, of the remaining 311 acres of undeveloped marshland, including 1,400 feet along the lake shore. The rest is still privately owned.

 

More than 80,000 cubic yards of landfill has been removed, and 11 acres of marshland has been restored, but the Upper Truckee and its primary tributary, Trout Creek, are still the single largest source of sediment flowing into the lake.

 

It will take years, and millions of dollars, to restore the rest of the marsh and set the river on a more natural course through the wetlands. Still, the project is considered crucial in the fight to improve the clarity of Lake Tahoe, the measuring stick by which environmentalists assess the ecosystem of the entire region.

"A wetland like this, at the terminus of a river, is really the last place where the heavy sediments can be deposited," Eisner said. "The wetlands act like a sponge, sucking up the bad stuff before it enters the lake."

 

The problem isn't limited to the Upper Truckee. About 75 percent of Tahoe marshlands and 50 percent of the meadow habitat was altered during the building boom. Not far from the marsh project is a giant intersection known as "The Y," a place where a person can see only buildings, asphalt and concrete without a single stretch of open ground or natural vegetation.

 

"We would like to see this redeveloped," said Julie Regan, communications and legislative affairs chief for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, which was created by California and Nevada in 1969 with the goal of protecting Lake Tahoe. "It's this kind of coverage of the ground that has more impact on the lake than anything else."

 

The environmental push in Lake Tahoe began in earnest in 1997 when President Bill Clinton held the first of what has become an annual forum on the lake ecosystem, a meeting that led to the creation of the Environmental Improvement Program.

 

Clinton reprised his role two weeks ago on the 10th anniversary of that gathering, telling a crowd of more than 1,000 people, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that "we owe the world the preservation of Lake Tahoe."

 

"It's not just for you, your children and your grandchildren," he said. "It's for everyone who might ever visit."

 

Federal officials announced they would contribute another $45 million to the restoration effort. Over the past decade, $1.1 billion has been spent on 266 restoration projects around the lake, from new roads and drainage to runoff basins and stiff construction requirements.

 

In all, more than 3,000 acres of private property have been purchased for open space and public use, 739 acres of wetlands have been restored, 374 acres of denuded land have been revegetated, and public pathways and mass transportation has been improved. The U.S. Forest Service and California's state park system, which own 85 percent of the land area in the Tahoe Basin, have thinned more than 21,000 acres of overgrown forest in an effort to reduce fire danger and prevent erosion.

 

Despite all the efforts, conditions appear to be getting worse.

 

The lake is warmer and soupier than ever before, according to a 45-page study released in August by UC Davis scientists. The report, the most comprehensive ever done on the lake, outlines significant changes in weather patterns over the years, including less snowfall and more rain, deteriorating lake clarity and increasing water temperature in the Lake Tahoe Basin, which is encouraging invasions of exotic fish and plant species.

 

The average temperature of the surface water in July has increased almost 5 degrees since 1999. On July 26, 2006, it was 78 degrees, the warmest in Lake Tahoe's recorded history, according to the report.

 

As of last year, the study found, Lake Tahoe was clear to an average depth of 67.7 feet. That's 4.6 feet less than in 2005. When measurements began in 1968, the lake was clear to an average depth of 102.4 feet.

 

Regan insisted things are improving, but clearing the lake of pollutants and sediment may take awhile. Lake Tahoe is the second-deepest lake in the nation behind Oregon's Crater Lake. It is so deep, at 1,645 feet, that a drop of water entering from one of its 63 tributaries will take 700 years to find its way out, according to scientists.

 

"We're actually fixing a lot of the environmental damage that occurred in the past," said Regan, pointing out that only 5,000 of the 42,000 developed properties in the Lake Tahoe Basin were built within the past 20 years.

 

"Healing the lake is a long process," she said. "The scientists say it is possible to get back to 100 feet clarity in 20 or 30 years if we make some hard choices."

Redevelopment is one of the choices that might begin to pay dividends. The Tahoe City Public Utility District recently completed a major renovation of the dam separating the lake from the Truckee River, building a park plaza and bicycle/pedestrian trail.

 

In an area where plumes of brown runoff could once be seen flowing into the river and lake, native vegetation, gutters, drains and an underground filtration system now capture storm water.

 

A newly built park at Commons Beach uses similar drainage techniques to reduce runoff into the lake. Miles of bicycle trails are being laid and sidewalks with drainage systems have been installed throughout Tahoe City.

 

"The reason it was done was to capture the water and improve the drainage and we took it a step further and decided if we are going to do that, let's make it a walkable town," said Ron Treabess, director of partnerships and planning for the North Lake Tahoe Resort Association, a nonprofit organization that works with Placer County on how to spend hotel tax money. "We need it for the people who live here. We need it for the visitors and to take care of the lake."

Similar redevelopment projects are being planned around the lake. Officials also hope to improve bus and shuttle service in the region and establish local and cross-lake ferry systems to ease congestion on the roadways.

 

Ultimately, keeping Lake Tahoe blue as the bumper sticker commands will require a long-term commitment and collaborative effort among all the stake-holders, including homeowners.

 

Eisner said he believes the restoration of the Upper Truckee marsh can be completed by 2010, but, like most projects in Lake Tahoe, it will take a collective will to overcome the inevitable squabbles over exactly how the project should proceed.

 

"Restoring the lake and the various related habitat features is not a decade process, it is a multi-decade process," Eisner said. "This is a big lake, and it is not going to change overnight."#

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/05/MNLLRLVHU.DTL