Jul 8, 2016:
“Last night’s vote by the Placer County Planning Commission to reject the proposed development at Martis Valley West is great news for all who love Lake Tahoe.

By voting to not adopt the Martis Valley West Specific Plan and to reject its inadequate environmental review, Planning Commissioners showed that they had clearly heard the valid concerns expressed by hundreds of community members and stakeholders, who for months have expressed alarm that the proposal offered no solutions to the negative impacts of the project.

The League to Save Lake Tahoe has repeatedly expressed grave concerns about the project, notably its addition of significant traffic impacts — and traffic-related pollution — to the Lake Tahoe Basin. Approval of the project would have set a dangerous precedent. Developers must not be allowed to get off the hook of proposing projects that threaten Lake Tahoe without providing solutions or adjusting their proposals to reduce such threats.

We encourage the Placer County Board of Supervisors to heed the wisdom of their planning commission and to demand that the Martis Valley West project’s proponents go back to the drawing board to develop a project that represents better community planning with stronger safeguards to protect Lake Tahoe.

This decision should send a message that while Lake-friendly redevelopment has a welcome place in Tahoe’s future, principled decision makers will reject projects that significantly threaten the Lake’s clarity, including those coming down the pipeline in the near future.”

Darcie Goodman Collins, PhD
Executive Director, League to Save Lake Tahoe


Darcie Goodman Collins, PhD, is executive director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, also known by the slogan “Keep Tahoe Blue.” The League is Tahoe's oldest and largest nonprofit environmental advocacy organization. The League has been monitoring and commenting on plans at Martis Valley West at each step of its planning process since the beginning. Unaddressed, the project’s added traffic would threaten both the health of the Lake and the health of the people who enjoy the Lake by adding risk in an emergency such as a wildfire. For more details, visit http://keeptahoeblue.org/martis