Posted by Snow in 
Bravo to the Sierra Club. Los Angeles Times today reports:
A federal judge is blocking construction of boating facilities on Lake Tahoe while he resolves an environmental lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed by the League to Save Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Club, challenges new regulations that would allow more than 100 new private piers, 10 new public piers, new boat ramps, mooring buoys and hundreds of slips.
The regulations were adopted last year by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency after years of controversy. Environmentalists argue that new piers and ramps would increase motorized boating and the pollution that goes with it.
In a recent ruling, U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton issued a preliminary injunction. It bars construction of the piers and ramps but allows the planning agency to move ahead with processing permits for the facilities.
Still, boaters might want to hold off. “The court notes that its independent review indicates that plaintiffs have shown some likelihood of success,” Karlton wrote.”
As a lifelong admirer of the Lake Tahoe environment, I am shocked that Tahoe residents would allow hundred of boat slips and docks t go in. Mainly because the water quality of the famed pure Tahoe has been diluted of late, due to decades of boating fuel damage, litter, and other waste clouding up the lake.
Usually a city with gambling revenues does not need to shore up new profits. I can’t imagine enjoying Lake Tahoe with any more docks and boat slips, and the Tahoe Keys is carved up enough as it is. The falling quality of the formerly pure Lake Tahoe water should have shored up any regulations to ban further on-water machines and boats for ever.
I find it hard to see how Tahoe residents think their property values will rise as clarity and quality of the lake water falls.
How can mere hundreds of greedy lake property owners and tourism commercial boat operators manifest such wanton disregard for a precious resource like Lake Tahoe?
This is just the kind of story that makes the Sierra Club the last bastion of environmental protection many municipalities will ever know.
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