BMPs, who needs EM?

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency says that any property that exists — residential or commercial — within the Tahoe Basin, requires a compliance certificate that their BMPs have been completed.

Jennifer and I attended an informational meeting today at the North Tahoe Conference Center that was put on by the TRPA. Shay Navarro, Associate Environmental Specialist with the Agency did a good job of explaining what the BMPs are. This is an acronym for “Best Management Practices.” The problem is that the clarity of our finest lake — Lake Tahoe – has diminished since 1968 when the visibility was 102 feet. At last measurement 2008, the visibility was 69 feet. Apparently the cause of this regression is a lot of sediment entering the Lake from things like water dripping off of roofs, moving dirt down the road and into the Lake. Another cause might be snow melt off on unformed and unpaved driveways, again picking up sediment including oil from autos and moving it into the lake.

The TRPA has been charged with remedying this situation and one of the ways they plan to do that is to require property owners to have their property assessed and bear the responsibility for mitigating any problems that their property may be causing. The 3 ways they are forcing the property owners hand are requiring the BMP certificate of compliance at 1) the point of application for a building permit; 2) application for a buoy permit; 3) targeted enforcement; or 4) at the point of a real estate transaction as something that must be disclosed to a potential buyer.

Some drastic measure of cooperation must be taken since out of the 45,000 properties within the Tahoe Basin that need to have compliance with this BMP situation, only 12,000 properties have stepped up to the plate (and this has been required since 2003).

For more information on this — there is a lot at the TRPA’s dedicated website where you can even find out if your property has a certificate.