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The Reno Gazette-Journal
www.rgj.com
Runoff will be clean this year when it reaches lake
By
Jeff DeLong
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2001
When warming temperatures melt the snow at Lake
Tahoe’s biggest casino strip, muddy waters will no longer drain directly into
an endangered natural treasure.
This fall, work finished in a near $20 million effort to control runoff in the
Stateline casino area on Tahoe’s south shore. The project is described not only
as one of the most ambitious environmental improvements completed in the Tahoe
Basin thus far, but also as a prime example of the cooperation necessary
between government and business if Lake Tahoe is to ultimately be saved.
“This is a very major project — probably the largest at Lake Tahoe so far in
terms of capturing runoff,” said Don Miner, a Douglas County commissioner and
appointee to the governing board of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
It was also years in coming. More than 25 years have passed since portions of
the project were first required as a condition for construction of what is now
Caesars Tahoe. Planning for an areawide drainage system began in 1988, but
progress was delayed as participants haggled over design and cost.
Movement came with the formation in 1995 of the Stateline Stormwater
Association, a coalition of public and private landowners with a stake in the
project. Members included Stateline’s four major casinos — Caesars, Harrah’s
Tahoe, Harveys Resort Hotel-Casino and the Horizon Casino Resort, in addition
to Park Cattle Co., Douglas County and the Nevada Department of Transportation.
The long-awaited project will treat urban runoff that used to drain from
streets and parking lots across some 77 acres of the casino area. Untreated, it
flowed into streams and ultimately into Lake Tahoe. Such runoff is rich in
pollutants that help fuel algae growth stealing the lake’s famed clarity.
Runoff will now be channeled into a network of pipes and into treatment vaults,
where oils, trash and similar pollutants will be filtered from the water.
The water will then be discharged into holding ponds and wetlands at
Edgewood-Tahoe Golf Course and after more impurities settle out, clean water
will ultimately flow into Lake Tahoe.
The Stateline drainage project is one of the highest-profile projects called
for in the TRPA’s $908 million Environmental Improvement Program and its
completion is heralded as particularly important.
“It’s one we’ve been working on a long, long time.
This is a critical one,” said Juan Palma, TRPA’s executive director. “This is
one of those examples of the kind of projects we have to do at the Tahoe
Basin.”
For years environmental groups like the League to Save Lake Tahoe criticized
delays affecting the drainage project and getting the various parties involved
to agree on costs and responsibilities was a challenge, Miner and others
agreed.
“It was a real pushing of the envelope in technology and there were so many
players involved,” said Steve Teshara, executive director of the Lake Tahoe Gaming
Alliance. “There were those who thought we couldn’t get it done, but we’ve done
it.”
In the end, Palma said, everyone involved agreed the benefits to Lake Tahoe
from the project were worth the trouble and the cost.
“Business people always look to the bottom line and they feel this has to be
done,” Palma said. “It’s a commitment to keep Lake Tahoe clear.”
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