ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of regional planning and land regulation issues in the Lake Tahoe Basin. It sketches the history of land development, and the evolution of the planning structure of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA). Planners at Tahoe realized early that any useful plan and supporting regulations would have to take account of all of the key types of impacts, and address their true causes. During the planning period, 1968 to 1971, planners confronted several difficult issues to spatial and environmental attributes of all of the Tahoe region. The TRPA's planning and regulatory structure has had to address all points in the hydrologic/ecologic cycle: uphill erosion, hydrologic conveyance, stream-zone protection, and wetlands protection. The most important planning change was to require TRPA to set standards that would ensure the protection of both the lake and watershed, and to make sure that the regional plan would not violate standards.
