history of the league
The League to Save Lake Tahoe has an impressive record of accomplishment. One of our earliest victories was the defeat of a development plan in the 1960’s which would have resulted in a much different Lake Tahoe Basin than we know today. The plan included a high-speed freeway circling the lake, a bridge over beautiful Emerald Bay, additional casino districts, and heavily populated urban centers around the lake. The newly formed League to Save Lake Tahoe successfully fought the plan and helped guide the management of the Tahoe area in a much different direction. Over the next few decades, the League established itself as the primary watchdog of the Tahoe Basin. In the 1970’s the League led efforts to eliminate the practice of dumping sewage in Lake Tahoe’s watershed. In the 1980’s we forced the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency to adopt a Regional Plan and environmental thresholds which would adequately protect the lake. And in the 1990’s the League successfully required the TRPA to establish urban boundaries to prevent residential and commercial uses from encroaching on conservation lands. In addition, the League organized a campaign which led to the ban of two-stroke watercraft engines on the lake. But in recent years, the League has done far more than advocate for good planning and adequate regulation for the Lake Tahoe Basin. Since in the mid-1990’s, the League has been a co-leader and the primary funder of the highly successful effort to assure adequate and appropriate public and private investment in conservation at Lake Tahoe. The collaboration that the League initiated with business interests at the Lake has received national and statewide recognition as a model for economic and environmental cooperation – and all this was achieved without ‘standing down’ from our traditional role as the Lake's watchdog. |