Release: Palisades Tahoe Developer Seeks Exception to State Fire Safe Regulations Last-minute edition to entitlement package seeks to skirt public safety rules
Contact: Tom Mooers (530) 265-2849 x200
November 16, 2024
PALISADES TAHOE DEVELOPER SEEKS EXCEPTION TO STATE FIRE SAFE REGULATIONS – LAST-MINUTE EDITION TO ENTITLEMENT PACKAGE SEEKS TO SKIRT PUBLIC SAFETY RULES
Olympic Valley, Calif. – In an eleventh-hour addition, would-be developers Alterra Mountain Company have included a request for an exception to the minimum state fire safety regulations in their request for development entitlements from the Placer County Board of Supervisors.
The request for a “Resolution granting an exception to the State Minimum Fire Safe Regulations” would allow Alterra’s project to avoid state safety laws. And it’s a tacit admission that their massive development would put the public at risk.
The change was included in a staff report for the final hearing on the proposed development, set for a meeting of the Placer County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday November 19 in Kings Beach.
“Alterra’s proposed exception to fire safety regulations proves that they know their proposed development endangers the anyone who lives, works, or plays in Tahoe’s Olympic Valley,” said Tom Mooers, Executive Director of Sierra Watch. “Now it’s up to the Placer County Board of Supervisors to decide which is more important: Alterra’s entitlements or public safety.”
Pictured: Tahoe’s Olympic Valley
For years, wildfire experts and local residents have called out Alterra’s proposed development in Tahoe’s Olympic Valley as a direct threat to public safety. The Village at Palisades Specific Plan would transform Olympic Valley and North Tahoe with development of a size and scale the region has never seen: 850 condo and hotel units with 1,493 new bedrooms and a 90,000-square-foot indoor amusement park.
Visual Simulation of Shirley Canyon Portion of Proposed Development
All of it is proposed for Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone with one way in and, in the event of wildfire, barely one way out.
The local firefighting agency, Olympic Valley Public Services District, is duly concerned, stating in a letter to Placer County that “To say that Olympic Valley is unlikely to host a large wildfire or require mass evacuation is not accurate and is not consistent with recent reports or District preparedness.”
The neighboring Town of Truckee is also aware of how a modern wildfire could stretch the region’s limited resources. “Currently, a wildfire event threatening Olympic Valley would quickly exceed Olympic Valley Fire, North Tahoe, and Truckee regional resources collectively,” warned the town in a letter to Placer County, “and would draw down resources that would likely also be needed to (1) protect other areas that would likely be threatened by a fire in this area, and (2) continue other 9-1-1 calls for service, including in the Town of Truckee.”
In the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the project, the County and consultants calculate that, with the new traffic, Olympic Valley Road would operate at Level of Service F – gridlock – on a normal day. On a bad day – during a wildfire – the EIR estimates it would take 11.1 hours to evacuate less than 3 miles.
Christopher A. Dicus, Ph.D, Professor, Wildland Fire & Fuels Management, California Polytechnic State University, cites a high risk that new development could make Olympic Valley a “death trap” during a red flag wildfire event.
Evacuees would stop-and-go at a “speed” of about one-quarter-mile-per-hour. Fire can travel at more than 14 miles per hour – in this case about 50 times faster than those trying to flee it. In a race against wildfire, the people would lose.
Fleeing fire August 30 2021 in South Lake Tahoe (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
For those stuck in the valley and unable to escape, Alterra proposes that people could “shelter in place”– in a parking lot or on a golf course. But the relatively open spaces of asphalt and fairways would provide little refuge. They, too, have been designated as in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.
Anyone left behind would be stuck in smoke. And according to new research by UCLA, although fire itself is deadly enough, it’s actually the smoke that kills. In a landmark study published in June of this year, Mortality Attributable to PM2.5 from Wildland Fires in California from 2008 to 2018, researchers found that inhaling the fine particulate matter from wildland fires led to 52,500 to 55,700 deaths in the eleven years from 2008-2018.
California’s State Minimum Fire Safe Regulations are designed to prevent such a disaster. They establish minimum wildfire protection standards related to emergency ingress and egress, signing and building numbering, water availability, and fuel modification.
Under the regulations, ingress and egress can only be provided via a dead-end road if the length of that road does not exceed maximum length standards. For parcels zoned for less than one acre, the maximum length of a dead-end road is 800 feet. If access to a property is provided solely by a dead-end road that exceeds the maximum length standards, the project applicant must construct a secondary access road to connect the dead-end road to a road network.
But Alterra’s massive development would be serviced by one dead road, Olympic Valley Road – approximately 2-miles long, significantly over the maximum length provided by state regulations. Hence the need for an exception.
“Alterra’s request for an exception to state safety laws is the opposite of preventing disaster,” said Mooers. “It’s planning one.”
About Sierra Watch
Sierra Watch secures conservation outcomes to protect the natural resources, mountain communities, and timeless values of the Tahoe Sierra. Founded in 2001, the Nevada City based non-profit has built a remarkable track record in land preservation in the Tahoe Sierra, on Donner Summit, and for other treasured Sierra landscapes. For more information, visit www.sierrawatch.org.
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