Issue Position: Lake Tahoe

Issue Position

Lake Tahoe's value to the entire nation is obvious to anyone who visits it. Upon seeing Lake Tahoe for the first time, Mark Twain wrote, "At last the Lake burst upon us -- a noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft full three thousand feet higher still! It was a vast oval, and one would have to use up eighty or a hundred good miles in traveling around it. As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords."

Today, however, the Lake is menaced by two immediate environmental threats: catastrophic wildfire and invasive species. I address these issues through my work on HR 3382 (See Lake Tahoe Restoration) and other forest management bills such as the Resilient Federal Forests Act (See Forest Management).

Also of great concern is an economy that is suffering the crushing burdens of over-regulation and that is squeezing the middle class out of the region. I have long advocated shifting local decision-making away from unelected regional board and back to the local communities that are most affected by these decisions.

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