Basics and Background

Keep Tahoe Blue and Sierra Watch Challenge Palisades Tahoe Development Approvals

Yesterday the League to Save Lake Tahoe joined Sierra Watch in filing suit in Placer County court seeking to overturn the newest round of approvals for Alterra Mountain Company’s proposed development in Olympic Valley.  The concerted legal action marks another milestone in the thirteen-year struggle over Olympic Valley and the future of the Tahoe Truckee Region.

Olympic Valley in Winter

In our Petition for Writ of Mandate, the League, the nonprofit environmental advocacy organization behind the movement to Keep Tahoe Blue, and Sierra Watch spell out how the Placer County Board of Supervisors’ actions to approve the development last month violated state planning law.

“As a solutions-based organization, litigation is an option of last resort. To protect Lake Tahoe, we were left with no choice in this case,” said Dr. Darcie Goodman Collins, Chief Executive Officer of the League to Save Lake Tahoe. “We have met repeatedly with development representatives and County officials to urge them to consider alternatives that would mitigate the environmental impacts of this project. But they were not interested. We are not opposed to the modernization and expansion of Palisades Tahoe, but we must take a stand to Keep Tahoe Blue.”

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 amusement park that Alterra hopes would draw 300,000 visitors every year. 

New development would make Olympic Valley a construction zone for 25 years. 

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.

Visual Simulation of Shirley Canyon Portion of Proposed Development

Visual Simulation of Shirley Canyon Portion of Proposed DevelopmentAt the Planning Commission hearing for the proposal in September, Alterra Mountain Company’s President of Real Estate Bryan Elliott took to the podium and explained the company’s rationale behind its proposed transformation of North Tahoe.  “We’re looking for the guests to spend more, not ski more,” he said. “To get more wallet capture out of the guests,” he said. 

“It’s really just as simple as that.”

The ongoing struggle pits a private equity backed goliath of the international tourism 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. 

“Our ongoing commitment to stand up to Alterra and defend our mountain values is a great example of how we can work together to protect the places we love,” says Tom Mooers of Sierra Watch.

Keeping Tahoe Truckee True in Tahoe City

Placer County officials first approved the project in 2016.  Sierra Watch took that first round of entitlements to court.  In 2021, the Third District Court of Appeal issued a groundbreaking opinion, siding with conservationists and finding that the 2016 approvals violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Tahoe locals and conservation groups hoped their victory in court would encourage Alterra to collaborate with the community and compromise on their project, but the would-be developers remained intransigent.  In 2022, Alterra filed a request for a new round of entitlements – for the exact same project.

Last month the Placer County Board of Supervisors voted to, yet again, approve Alterra’s request for entitlements.  Those approvals, according to the groups’ petition, violate CEQA – and the appellate court’s decision.

Tahoe Traffic and Lake Clarity

The petition spells out how Alterra and Placer County planners continue to downplay impacts on traffic in a tourist mecca that already suffers from too many visitors and not enough road capacity.  Alterra’s proposed development would make Tahoe’s traffic problem worse, adding more than 3,300 new daily car trips to the existing gridlock.

That traffic also adds the pollutants to Lake Tahoe that are robbing the lake of its famous clarity.  Alterra’s project, although proposed for land outside the Tahoe Basin, would pump more than ten times the amount of traffic that would be allowed by a project inside the Basin.

The Court of Appeals, in its 2021 decision, already called out Placer County for failing to assess Alterra’s impact on Tahoe’s clarity.  But when it came time to address that deficiency in the Revised EIR, Placer County doubled down on its dismissiveness.

Decades of science identify car pollution as a major contributor to loss of lake clarity. And current policy seeks to address the problem. Placer planners, however, deny the link and downplay the project’s impacts, concluding that “while it was previously thought that there was a strong correlation between VMT (traffic) and sediment loading, this is no longer the case.”

Tahoe and its famously clear waters

According to the petition filed today, this head-in-the-sand approach “contravenes clear direction in the Appellate Opinion by relying on misleading, incomplete data to conclude the Project would not significantly adversely impact regional air quality or Lake Tahoe’s water quality and clarity.”

Or, as the League to Save Lake Tahoe’s Policy Director Gavin Feiger put it, “Alterra’s project would do the opposite of Keep Tahoe Blue.”

“The science is clear,” says Feiger, “Traffic – including thousands of new daily car trips that would flow from the massive development project into Tahoe – degrades the Lake’s unique environment and famously blue waters.”

Wildfire Danger and Public Safety

Traffic in Tahoe is not only a threat to the quality of life in the region and the clarity of the waters of the lake, in the event of wildfire, it could be deadly.

Olympic Valley and the land Alterra proposes to develop is designated as a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, with only one way in and potentially no way out. 

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.

Fleeing fire August 30 2021 in South Lake Tahoe (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The situation is dangerous enough that, as part of the entitlement package, Placer County is even proposing an exception to minimum state fire safe regulations.  But the County’s EIR dismisses the danger and claims that the project does not present a “significant impact” and that no safety risks exist, a conclusion that runs counter to the court’s decision – and common sense.

“Alterra Mountain Company is not planning to avoid a disaster,” says Mooers of Sierra Watch.  “They are planning to have one.”

Recycled Review

Compounding the flaws of its environmental review, for many critical issues Placer County did not conduct any new research. Instead, the County recycled its previous EIR – the one written in 2016 and thrown out in 2022. 

Tahoe, according to the conservation groups’ petition, is not the same place it was eight years ago.  Wildfire behavior has changed and endangers mountain communities in ways not foreseen back then.  Prolonged drought and climate change dispute rosy predictions of ample water supplies. 

Dry Bed of Washeshu Creek in Olympic Valley

Even the name of the place at stake has changed; Squaw Valley is now Palisades Tahoe – and is connected to Alpine Meadows to create Tahoe’s biggest mega-resort.

For the League and Sierra Watch, reliance on outdated data, combined with dismissiveness of critical issues, make for an environmental review process that fails to meet the standards of state law. 

Teaming up for Tahoe

Although these issues are familiar to anyone involved with the effort to keep Tahoe Truckee True, one thing is different in this latest challenge: the League to Save Lake Tahoe is joining Sierra Watch as a co-plaintiff.

“We have worked for more than a decade to find a compromise here, but Alterra was unwilling to embrace project alternatives that would achieve their goals without impacting Tahoe,” said Goodman Collins, __ of the League to Save Lake Tahoe. “We are committed to an open dialogue with Alterra and County officials to design a project that will support and uplift the Tahoe community without jeopardizing the precious natural resources that’s treasured by all who live, work and visit here.”