Tahoe Basin advocates pledge collaboration
by Teresa Crawford, Outpost staff
Aspens dressed for
fall reflect in water at Kings Beach. Photo by
Teresa Crawford
Nothing has slowed the decline of the lake's fabled
transparency, which drops about one and one-half feet a
year, not decades of scientific studies, not bitter court
battles, not millions invested in exporting sewage and
trapping sediment, not even a nation's love.
Lead scientist predicts a 20-year window to heal lake
Charles Goldman, who recently won an Einstein Award for fresh water research, has monitored the lake's vital signs for 40 years as founder and director of the Tahoe Research Group at University of California, Davis.
"Good science can produce good policy," Goldman said. "Everybody is going to lose if Tahoe's decline continues and it is our responsibility to stop that. We have got a decade, maybe 20 years to turn this around."
The Lake Tahoe Basin Adaptive Research Symposium on Oct. 20-21 resulted from the Presidential Forum of July 1997 that focused attention on accelerating the search for solutions to protect the nation's second deepest lake from irreversible destruction of its clarity and forest health.
The conference-goers also grappled with overcoming institutional barriers that make it hard for universities to share equipment, funding and research findings. But people not invited to the podium like Steven Goldman, erosion control and stream restoration manager for the California Tahoe Conservancy, named a bigger barrier to team work on the lake's behalf.
It's a two-way information gap between the pure researchers and the land planners who are supposed to apply their findings to real world remedies.
"I would have alternated researcher presentations with folks like me who do the work," Goldman said. "We could show researchers how a typical project works and how we make decisions, so they could understand how to tailor their studies."
However, Charles Goldman, the scientist, acknowledged that
only collaboration among scientists, land-use planners and
the public will check the inflow of sediment bound to
phosphorus that threatens to turn the lake a turbid green in
about 30 years. Much of the sediment comes from urban runoff
such as roofs, road drainage ditches and construction sites.
It contains nitrogen and phosphorus and forms a rich
fertilizer that nourishes algal growth which clouds the
water and slimes shore-side boulders.
"Phosphorus loading has to be controlled or we will lose this lake," Charles Goldman said. "It comes from the golf courses, the non-native lawns, the dust and particularly the sediment erosion."
Even worse, he said, was the growing threat of internal loading, or a sudden release of phosphorus from the lake's bed, 1600 feet down. A cap of iron oxide keeps the phosphorus in place as long as the oxygen content of the water above it remains high. But algae uses oxygen and increased vegetation growth could lower the deep water oxygen enough to cause a sudden irreversible loss of clarity, Goldman said.
Building around the lake speeds erosion
His group's observational studies have traced the impact of modern human settlement or "urbanization." Since 1960, development has eroded streams, dirtied the air with woodsmoke and auto exhaust and destroyed the Sierra Nevada's largest wetlands. Wetlands are nature's filtration systems for trapping sediment.
Charles Goldman,
scientist, and Steve Goldman, planner, confer.
Photo by Teresa Crawford
The Tahoe Keys, a marina and housing development built in
the late 1950s where the Upper Truckee River flows into Lake
Tahoe at its south shore paved over and filled in the mouth
of the basin's largest wetland.
Now the river runs brown and straight, thick with suspended solids, Charles Goldman said. On an aerial view he displayed to the conference, a plume of murky water spreads beyond the docks and boathouses of the Keys hundreds of yards into the lake.
Conference-goers
enjoyed stunning views of Lake Tahoe from Kings
Beach pier. Photo by Teresa Crawford. Click on
image for larger photo.
The Tahoe Research Group has influenced policy before, when
it convinced municipal districts around the lake to pump
treated sewage out of the basin instead of leaving it to
seep into the ground water or even dumping it into the lake,
which Goldman said would have been disastrous.
Advocates for lake plan to put research into practice
Buzzwords--cooperation, collaboration and interdisciplinary--dominated the symposium's discussion at the North Lake Tahoe Conference Center, an airy building that sits on the beige sands of Kings Beach, Calif. It is next to a public park that features runoff-absorbing trees and grasses, a picnic area and terrific views. The California Tahoe Conservancy, a state agency, refurbished the area from a rundown commercial strip.
Nearly every one of the 21 speakers over two days agreed with John Reuter of the Tahoe Research Group that scientists should team up with each other to figure out where the sediment and other pollution comes from, help local managers pick the most cost-effective methods to keep it out of the lake and most importantly, monitor the lake's response to interventions.
Reuter said the group is working on an integrated watershed model that will fit together all the available data in a computerized simulation so managers can predict the lake's response to different strategies for reducing nutrient loads. This is superior to isolated studies, he said. Restoration of disturbed watersheds can start before studies are completed and managers like Steven Goldman can choose the best benefit for their dollars.
Speakers: More action, less talk needed
But when University of Nevada, Reno hydrologist John Warwick concluded his talk on storm runoff in the Incline Creek watershed, he said he didn't see enough evidence of collaboration at this conference.
"If we want to collaborate, we must get beyond the rhetoric
and do it now," he said. "It's time to put reality into the
rhetoric of collaboration. A year from now, will we see
reports from multiple agencies?"
Land managers from the conservancy, Nevada's erosion control program and a hydrologist for Incline Village, Nev., said they welcomed more collaboration with scientists, because it was usually scarce.
"They need to walk around the watershed in the rain before
they give us models," Goldman said. "I didn't hear any of
the science presenters acknowledge the human impact on the
hydrology balance. We already knew that the small silt
particles carry more phosphorus to fuel algal growth than
the larger ones.
"The researchers said this was a great revelation. The problem is, what to do. To trap clay, you have to acquire a lot of land to spread water on and do elaborate engineering. Local governments do not want to go to that trouble."
Goldman described one of the many practical dilemmas involved in protecting the lake's purity from intense human use.
"About 435 miles of paved road rings the lake, drained by 900 miles of dirt ditches," he said. "They carry dirty water straight to the lake, and they erode rapidly. Then the county refills them with fresh dirt, all ready to erode again.
"Why don't the researchers help us teach the county engineers and their consultants what the problem is? They don't know that their designs don't trap the critical small particles."
Kathy Jordan, who runs Nevada's erosion control program with monies from the state Legislature, said a bridge was needed to tie research to the nuts and bolts of projects.
"What I need from the researchers is data I can apply," she said. "Sometimes, I need it yesterday. I use the Kathy Rule. If I can't understand it, I can't explain it to staff, legislators, the public or private funding sources."
Resource specialist Meri McEneny for the Incline Village General Improvement District's said she found out about a useful erosion study in her area from a poster at the conference because the investigator had never shared his findings.
Basin resident calls for more public involvement in research
At a workshop on the conference's second day to discuss public citizen involvement in Tahoe research and restoration, only three members of the public joined several agency public information specialists. Poor outreach to the public is part of the problem regulators have in convincing basin residents to change their behavior, Reinhard Richter, a retired Incline Village resident, said later.
"I want to see clear goals and a time frame to accomplish them," he said. "It seems like people aren"t talking to each other."
Carl Hasty of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency wrapped up the event's two intense days, promising a progress report on collaborative research in January.
"We have much more community now than we ever had in the past," he said, recalling the bad old days of constant litigation. "The good news is we're having this conversation."
Posted Dec. 7,
1998
Copyright 1998 Nevada Outpost
|
Nevada Outpost is produced by
students at the |
|
