The bistate Tahoe Regional Planning Agency has imposed a 90-day operational hiatus on applications relating to buoys, piers and boat ramps. The decision came on Sept. 22, less than a week after a federal judge ordered the TRPA to reconsider proposed shorezone amendments.
“The hiatus will allow staff to sort out the legal and operational implications of the court ruling,” TRPA spokeswoman Julie Regan told the Sierra Sun.
The 90-day hiatus — enacted at the Sept. 22 governing board meeting at the North Tahoe Event Center in Kings Beach — means lakefront property owners cannot file applications to bring existing buoys into conformance with the agency's proposed ordinance updates on October 2008.
On Thursday, Sept. 16, U.S. District Court Senior Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled in favor of the League to Save Lake Tahoe and the Tahoe Sierra Club in a challenge to the amendments, which would have allowed the placement of 1,862 new mooring buoys and construction of 128 private piers, 10 public piers, six new boat ramps and 235 boat slips on Lake Tahoe.
The conservation groups filed a lawsuit challenging the amendments in November 2008, a month after TRPA governing board approval of the amendments.
In the 66-page ruling, Karlton found several provisions in the approved amendments were “arbitrary and capricious.” The judge also found the shorezone amendments would be ineffective in achieving many of the agency's environmental goals, known as “thresholds.”
Governing board member Mara Bresnick said the direction board gave to staff, following six hours of closed session deliberation on Sept. 22, has two components.
“The internal staff will begin evaluating the ramifications of the court ruling on operations,” she said. “The other component is the legal side, where the legal committee and the legal team will consider the legal options available to the agency.”
Those options include an appeal of Karlton's order, or a motion to amend or clarify the order, Bresnick said. TRPA will have 30 days from Sept. 16 — the date the ruling was issued — to file an appeal, according to Jill Rozier with TRPA's legal team.
Tahoe Lakefront Owners Association Executive Director Jan Brisco — who represents homeowners attempting to place mooring buoys in the lake near their properties — said the hiatus is unsurprising.
“The TRPA has given themselves a cushion of time sufficient for analyzing all the available options,” Brisco said. “As one of the largest stakeholders in this matter, we will be there every step of the way and offer any help we can.”
