Release: Doubling Down on Development: Placer County Releases Final Impact Report on Massive Palisades Tahoe Proposal
Contact: Tom Mooers (530) 265-2849 x200
August 9, 2024
Doubling Down on Development: Placer County Releases Final Impact Report on Massive Palisades Tahoe Proposal
Olympic Valley, Calif. – Placer County released the final environmental review document for Alterra’s proposed development in Tahoe’s Olympic Valley today.
The document doubles down on the resort and real estate behemoth’s plans to remake the region with luxury condos and an indoor waterpark; they’ve made no changes to the failed plan first put forward in 2014.
“For more than ten years, Alterra Mountain company has been trying to cram Vegas-style excess into Olympic Valley,” says Tom Mooers, Executive Director of Sierra Watch. “Tahoe deserves better.”
Pictured: Tahoe’s Olympic Valley
The Final Revised Environmental Impact Report for the proposed Village at Palisades Tahoe Specific Plan is the County’s final document in its state-mandated assessment of the project’s potential impacts on everything from the availability of workforce housing to the clarity of Lake Tahoe.
It offers responses to thousands of citizen comments in opposition to the plan. And it sets the public planning process in motion – triggering public hearings and, sometime in the months ahead, a decision on the biggest growth controversy in Tahoe this century.
According to Tahoe conservationists, the document falls short of state requirements.
“The Final EIR is just more proof that Alterra’s plan is grossly irresponsible and, also, that the County’s review is clearly inadequate,” according to Mooers.
The fight for Tahoe’s future started in 2011, when Alterra’s parent company, KSL Capital Partners, bought the famed Sierra ski resort then known as Squaw Valley. By 2014, they had finalized their plans to cash in on the property by transforming Tahoe with development of a size, scale, and scope the region has never seen.
The project would include 850 upscale condo and hotel units with 1,493 new bedrooms. The main attraction would be a 90,000-square-foot indoor waterpark – including artificial rivers, waterslides, indoor water-skiing, and video arcades – that Alterra hopes would draw 300,000 visitors every year.
New development would make Olympic Valley a construction zone for 25 years.
According to the environmental review documents, it would add 3,300 new daily car trips to Tahoe traffic, demand 78,263,299 gallons of water annually from the local watershed, and threaten the region’s most recognizable asset: the clarity – and famously blue waters – of Lake Tahoe.
Pictured: 2013 Scale Model of Proposed Development
The struggle over Olympic Valley pits a private equity backed goliath of the international ski industry against a grassroots movement of local residents and Tahoe visitors, working together as the campaign to keep Tahoe Truckee True.
So far, the goliath is losing. Placer County officials first approved the project in 2016. But in 2022 Sierra Watch secured a court order to rescind those approvals.
Tahoe locals hoped the setback would encourage Alterra to collaborate with the community and compromise on their project, but the would-be developers are undeterred. In 2022, Alterra filed a request for a new round of entitlements – for the exact same project.
Public response has been overwhelming: regulatory agencies, conservation non-profits, and thousands of citizens have sent letters to Placer County to comment on the plan. Of the 2,629 letters submitted over a 60-day comment period, only 8 expressed support for Alterra’s project; 2,621 – more than 99% – expressed opposition.
Pictured: 2,629 comment letters, 99% expressing opposition
The Final Revised Environmental Impact Report, released today, is required by state law to assess the project’s wide-ranging impacts and address the mountain of comments submitted last year.
But, even though the proposal is ten years old, Placer County is only updating portions of its environmental review. For most of its assessment, they are exhuming the baseline and findings of the previous environmental impact report, drafted in 2015 and certified in 2016. As if, since then, time has stood still. It hasn’t. Tahoe has gone through significant changes and learned new information about key issues.
For example, over the last nine years, short term rentals – and Covid – brought major changes in visitation patterns and housing availability. The danger of wildfire has grown with fires now travelling over the crest of the Sierra to endanger Tahoe communities. Drought and climate change threaten long term water supplies. Winter ski traffic has gotten worse.
But the County is choosing to ignore new information – and the lived experiences of locals – and relying on the old data for most of its assessment.
The document acknowledges, “The world is not static, so it is inevitable that some new information would become available during the nearly 6-year (November 2016 to July 2022) period.”
But it shirks the responsibility to update its assessment, claiming that any changes have been insignificant, “These issues have merely evolved since certification of the EIR.”
Even on the issues for which the courts required new analysis, the County chooses a head-in-the-sand approach, denying what the project would mean to Tahoe.
The increasing danger of catastrophic wildfire is case in point.
Like most of Tahoe, Olympic Valley suffers from a combination of too many cars and not enough road capacity. Most weekends, that traffic is a nuisance. In the event of wildfire, it could be deadly.
The County’s environmental assessment admits as much, projecting that it would take evacuees more than 11 hours to drive 3 miles from Palisades Tahoe to Highway 89; those stuck in the valley would be told to “shelter in place” in a parking lot or on a golf course until the flames subside.
Yet the Final EIR doubles down the ongoing dismissal of concerns about public safety, boldly claiming, “If an approaching wildfire either did not allow enough time to initiate an evacuation, or if an evacuation were started and then halted, people could safely shelter-in-place at the project site at any time. Therefore, there is not a direct nexus between the time needed to conduct an evacuation and the preservation of public safety during a wildfire.”
Pictured: Tahoe residents turning out for a Placer County hearing in 2016
Increasing opposition to the project extends beyond concerns over wildfires. According to public documents, Alterra’s new development would take many of the problems facing Tahoe and make them worse – from the availability of workforce housing in the region to the health of the watershed in Olympic Valley.
The project’s threat to the multi-generational commitment to Keep Tahoe Blue is another example. Conservation groups point to the County’s ongoing insistence to downplay the project’s impacts on lake clarity and deny responsibility to protect the region’s most important ecological – and economic – resource.
Pictured: Volunteers sign up to keep Tahoe Truckee True
As part of the planning process, the County also announced two meetings designed to facilitate public involvement August 15 and 17.
The first meeting will be held online on Thursday August 15 at 5:30 p.m. Attendees are asked to register in advance with Placer County at https://placer-ca-gov.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BZ6yOXycSqyL0qfnTWGuow
The second is in-person, on Saturday August 17 at 10:00 a.m. in the Palisades Tahoe Ballroom, 1750 Village East Rd in Olympic Valley. There is a Zoom option for that one, too; register at https://placer-ca-gov.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8A9TyBi3Shif4-Vw7oDvRg
“The bad news is that Alterra is doubling down on its nightmare vision for the future of Tahoe,” says Mooers. “The good news is that day after day, year after year, we are proving that we work together to stand up for the Sierra and defend our mountain culture.”
“And, when it comes to our commitment to keeping Tahoe Truckee True, we’re just getting started.”
More information about the proposed development can be found at Placer County’s project website: https://www.placer.ca.gov/8213/Village-at-Palisades-Tahoe-Specific-Plan.
To get involved in the movement to keep Tahoe Truckee True, visit https://www.sierrawatch.org/.
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