By Richard N. Velotta, Las Vegas Review-Journal

OLYMPIC VALLEY — An estimated 3.5 million Chinese tourists want to travel to the United States next year but may never get here because of regulatory issues, government red tape and airlines and airports that aren’t ready for them.

The rush of international visitors is occurring at a time when the aviation industry is in the midst of massive change, Mike Boyd, president and CEO of Evergreen, Colo.-based Boyd Group International, said this week.

About 300 people are attending Boyd’s 21st annual International Aviation Forecast Summit at the Resort at Squaw Creek.

Industry leaders are projecting that 20 million Chinese visitors will travel to the U.S. over the next 10 years.

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The Sierra State Parks Foundation’s third annual A Liar’s Cruise is Oct. 8.

Tall tales and mysterious truths will be told while never-ending hors d’oeuvres and free-flowing bubbly at served. Storytellers will spin their yarns while cruising along Tahoe’s West Shore on the Tahoe Gal. Guests will be the judge and guess who’s telling the truth.

Tickets are $75, with limited seating. To purchase tickets, call 530.583.9911.

About 6,800 acres near Caples Lake could be restored in an ecological project being proposed by El Dorado Irrigation District.

The public may comment on the proposed initial study for this area off Highway 88. EID also wants to adopt a negative declaration.

EID would partner with the Eldorado National Forest over a four-year period to complete the watershed project.

The project includes prescribed fire on about 6,800 acres, meadow restoration, aspen enhancement, and rerouting about a half mile of trail in the Jake Schneider Meadow.

Comments will be taken until 5pm Oct. 21. There will be a public hearing on Nov. 14 at 10am during the EID board’s regular meeting.

For more info, email dcorcoran@eid.org.

There will be a public workshop on Nov. 1 from 6-8pm at the South Tahoe Public Utility District Building, 1275 Meadow Crest Drive, to learn more about the plan to use herbicides in the Tahoe Keys. Photo/Provided

By Lake Tahoe News

The Tahoe Keys Property Owners Association is going forward with plans to use an herbicide to rid the canals of invasive species, Eurasian milfoil and curly leaf pondweed in particular.

It will be up to the Lahontan Water Quality Control Board to issue the permit.

In December 2011 the water board voted to allow herbicides to be used on a case-by-case basis. If this is permitted, it would be the first time.

TKPOA wants a permit to use aquatic herbicides in 2018 on 13 of its 172 acres. The plan is to apply low levels of the herbicides Endothall, Triclopyr and Penoxsulam on nine sites. None of the chemicals should reach the lake, according to officials.

The two plants being targeted have taken over more than 90 percent of the Tahoe Keys lagoon system.

“Comprehensive dye studies conducted in 2011 and again in 2016 have shown that water movement will not carry the herbicides out of the back channel lagoons into Lake Tahoe during the test period.  Surface-to-bottom curtains and/or other barriers will be placed at select sites as an extra layer of precaution to isolate the herbicide demonstration areas,” TKPOA officials said in a statement. “Secondary barriers will be ready to be deployed as contingency measures in case trace amounts are detected during the test, ensuring no movement of herbicides into Lake Tahoe.”

The plants have been choking the canals and have spread to other parts of the lake. They affect the lake’s ecosystems and clarity.

The warming shallow waters are helping the plants to proliferate.

Herbicides are not the only mechanism being used. TKPOA has made improvements to its harvesting and collection of the fragments. However, this is just like mowing – the plant keeps growing. Bottom barrier mats and dredging are also methods to curtail the weeds.

TKPOA also installed a boat backup station that is designed to reduce the spread of weeds, and purchasing the Lake Tallac lagoon in part to better control the infestations.

Every five years, the Forest Service conducts voluntary visitor use surveys to learn from forest visitors about their experience. This on-going survey has already been conducted twice on every national forest in the country. The survey team is returning to the Eldorado National Forest to update the information previously gathered, as well as to look at recreation trends over time.

During the last survey in 2012 on the Eldorado, 1,889 individuals were interviewed who reported their primary activities were downhill skiing (42 percent) and hiking-walking (17 percent). This last study estimated a total of approximately 900,000 Eldorado National Forest visits for the year.

Forest Service and contract employees will be working on the new survey at developed and dispersed recreation sites and along Forest Service roads where they will gather more than 200 samples of information from visitors on different days throughout the next year. The survey team will be wearing bright orange vests and have a sign that says “Traffic Survey Ahead”. Visitors are encouraged to participate in the survey by pulling over and doing an interview.

The basic interview lasts about eight minutes. Every other visitor is asked a few additional questions which may take an additional five minutes. The questions visitors are asked include: Where did you recreate on the forest? How many people traveled with you? How long were you on the forest? What other recreation sites did you visit while on the forest? How satisfied were you with the facilities and services provided? About a third of forest visitors will also be asked to complete a survey on recreation spending during their trip. All responses are totally confidential. A person’s name is never written anywhere on the survey.

Information collected in this national study will be used for local forest planning and community tourism efforts, as well as at the state planning level, and by Congress.

·       “Democrazy” is an interactive clown show that will be at South Tahoe High School on Sept. 30 at 7pm. Tickets are $15 for adults, $5 for kids. Call Tahoe Arts Project for tickets – 530.542.3632.

·     During the 8th annual Great Sierra River Cleanup last weekend more than 12 tons of trash was pulled from the rivers, lakes, and streams of the Sierra Nevada.

·       TAMBA had 153 riders on the 6th annual Rose to Toads ride. About $6,550 was raised, with 100 of the funds going to trails in Lake Tahoe.

·       Fall Food Fest benefiting Lake Tahoe Educational Foundation is Oct. 8 from 6-9:30pm at Hard Rock Lake Tahoe. Tickets are $50.

·       The Truckee Marathon is Sept. 25 from 8am-2pm.

The Tahoe Women’s Community Fund’s second annual membership dinner is Oct. 12.

This nonprofit entity was launched last year with the goal of securing money from members that will then be doled out to entities roughly from Glenbrook to Meyers to Camp Richardson. While the members may come from anywhere, the money is staying on the South Shore.The Tahoe Women’s Community Fund has three annual membership levels — $100, $250 and $1,000. A percentage of each of these will go into an endowment fund to help sustain the organization.

The dinner is at Harrah’s Tahoe from 6-8pm. Cost is $25; tickets are available online.

By Kathryn Reed

The hose is full throttle and still the fire jumps along the wall. At one point it dances overhead on the ceiling like it wants to wrap its potentially deadly tentacles around those who want to kill it.

It’s as though the fire is alive. Oxygen – it feeds off of it.

The room goes dark. There’s smoke. It’s a game of hide and seek.

“Everything we do is by touch,” South Lake Tahoe Fire Chief Jeff Meston told Lake Tahoe News. “It’s all done at knee level. We are usually on the bottom third of the building because if you stand, you get burned.”

It’s normal for a fire to spread overhead and temperatures to reach 1,700 degrees.

What made this particular fire different is that with a push of the button the flames went away.

The simulator helps crews train for live fire action. Photo/Provided

South Lake Tahoe firefighters are getting to experience three scenarios – a kitchen, hazardous materials and second floor bedroom fires – during four days of training in a simulator.

Many of the younger guys are lacking real fire experience. This time inside the trailer is about 75 percent realistic. The heat is much less at about 500 degrees. And the level of smoke is nowhere near what it would be in the real world. A lot of this has to do with natural gas being used during training.

Even for the veterans, what they are encountering in buildings compared to last century is different.

“The biggest difference between fires today and 20 years ago is synthetics. Instead of a clean fire, it’s a carbon fire,” Battalion Chief Jim Drennan told Lake Tahoe News. “It’s highly toxic.”

Tactics are changing in how to fight these types of fires. The books are being rewritten to take into account the substances firefighters will find in today’s structures.

Building code changes have benefited owners when it comes to snow loads, but some ceiling joints are quick to collapse in a fire. Time is of the essence, though safety is always the priority.

Firefighters have 60 seconds to get dressed from the time a call comes in. In just more than three minutes the hose lines should be laid. In South Lake Tahoe, they expect to be at the fire between 10 and 12 minutes after they get the call.

Two firefighters usually go in at a time. This is for safety as well as muscle. Those hoses are heavy. Turnouts are not light. And with a breathing apparatus on, they are carrying about 65 pounds of extra weight.

South Lake Tahoe had been a bit negligent in upgrading uniforms for the men and women. Turnouts that were to last eight years have been used for 12. That’s now changing, with each firefighter given two sets.

And in Tahoe there’s always the threat of a wildland fire. That requires completely different gear.

Then there is the added element of weather. All that water usually means icicles form on the firefighters during winter. Slipping on the ice they’ve created becomes another concern.

And while training is a daily activity, there is nothing routine about their jobs.

Open letter to the Placer County Board of Supervisors,

Ongoing county actions concerning two major development proposals at Lake Tahoe (Martis Valley West and the Squaw Valley Village Plan) have disregarded several letters to the Board of Supervisors advising you of your legal shortfalls concerning compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act and your Placer County codes.

The county is on a path to cause numerous long term and irreversible impacts to North Lake Tahoe, while demonstrating an alarming disregard for the public interest. The state attorney general’s comments on your environmental impact reports: “reasoning is flawed.” …“entirely inconsistent with the purposes of CEQA”…“EIR fails to include significant pending projects.”…“EIR analysis is impermissible under CEQA.”

We call on you to uphold your legal obligations to the public. Is not government formed by and for the people? Your approval of the Martis Valley West and Squaw Village projects are dismissive of the compelling concerns raised by the public and several agencies, as well as over 60 small businesses. Will the public have to seek remedy through the courts to force county compliance with our laws?

Auburn seems to be telling the Tahoe public to accept over 20 significant and irreversible environmental impacts from the Squaw Village project. Among other egregious consequences, the proposal would expose every person caught in a Squaw Valley emergency evacuation to a 10.7-hour traffic stall. If not incinerated in Squaw, the crawling cars and buses would then be trapped on Highway 89 from Tahoe City to Truckee.

The Martis Valley development would substantially worsen traffic on Highway 267. The CHP testified on July 7, 2016, that the traffic on July 3 was backed-up from Kings Beach to Northstar until midnight. Traffic failures in Kings Beach are forcing police to patrol by bicycle.

Both the Squaw and Martis developments would cause traffic “Level of Service F,” which stands for failure. Should the Tahoe Emergency Evacuation Plan simply say, “Good luck waiting!”

Who will be accountable for the charred families caught in those forest fires that will rage, at some point, through Tahoe? You know for a fact (the F grade) that our road infrastructure cannot accommodate these developments.

The supervisors’ first and foremost responsibility is to the public’s health and safety. We need you to demonstrate responsible and accountable government, comply with our laws and avoid unnecessary litigation.

Sincerely,

Daniel D. Heagerty, director Granite Chief Wilderness Protection League

Ryan Huddin

Jessica McGee

Two Gardnerville residents were arrested Thursday on a slew of charges in Truckee.

Ryan Huddin, 31, and Jessica McGee, 29, face numerous charges related to recent thefts in the Truckee area. The were arrested Sept. 22 at 10:30pm after officers responded to the area of the Glenshire General Store for a report of two suspicious subjects loitering near closed businesses.

Officers said both suspects provided false information. A brief investigation revealed they both had numerous warrants from out of the area.

In their possession was a large quantity of stolen property they have acquired over the past few days, officers said. Property included multiple bicycles (one was valued at more than $7,000), miscellaneous power tools, as well as heroin and drug paraphernalia.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report