Guest Post: Why Tahoe Flows Into the Bay

Scott Lankford, Author

During the Gold Rush era, pioneer geographers stubbornly penciled in a completely mythical river linking Lake Tahoe to San Francisco Bay. Of course no such river actually exists–yet in the battle to save the planet’s lakes, bays, and waterways from destruction, Lake Tahoe and the Bay must forever remain linked after all. Indeed no two bodies of water anywhere on earth have done more to help win the struggle to improve planetary water quality than Lake Tahoe and San Francisco Bay. In this sense, perhaps Lake Tahoe really does “flow to the Bay” after all.

That’s because fifty years ago two separate groups of amateur kitchen-table activists set out to change the world–and they did.

The first such group was, of course, our very own Save The Bay — under the visionary leadership of Kay Kerr, Sylvia McLaughlin, and Esther Gulick. Beginning in 1961, they fought to stop the flow of raw sewage and untreated industrial effluent directly into the Bay; and blocked landfill plans that would have buried over two thirds of the bay completely–leaving us with little more than a seagoing sewer.

The second such group was the nascent League to Save Lake Tahoe, simultaneously founded in 1960 to block developers’ plans to build enough high rise casinos, landfill marinas, and shoreline freeways to turn the lake into a high altitude sewer (San Francisco Bay’s tragic twin).