The League's position on shorezone public trust doctrine
Many years ago, the League decided to take a neutral position on this issue for the following reasons:
(1) We seek to unite people of many persuasions behind the effort to ‘Keep Tahoe Blue’. We have Lake Tahoe protectors who feel passionately that the public trust easement is a severe violation of property rights, and we have Lake Tahoe protectors who feel just as passionately that walking along the shoreline is a fundamental human right. In terms of our mission, we feel it is more important to get these two groups of people working together on issues like watershed restoration and limiting urbanization than it is to take sides in what we see as essentially a dispute about property rights rather than an environmental issue.
(2) Accordingly, our focus with respect to promoting low-impact public access to Lake Tahoe is to support public beaches, supplied with appropriate infrastructure (toilets, trash, public transportation and/or properly managed parking, protection of sensitive areas, etc.) and enforcement (against excessive noise, illegal fires, etc.).
The League strongly supports other aspects of the public trust doctrine, including the protection of the public interest in clean water and a healthy ecosystem. It is just the public trust easement to travel along the shorelands that we have decided to neither support nor oppose. |
