The Lake Tahoe Restoration Act is bipartisan legislation that provides funding for projects that support forest health, water for fire infrastructure, watershed restoration, and more.
The Act expires on Sept. 30, 2024 and the $400 million authorized through the legislation has not been spent, said Dr. Darcie Goodman Collins, CEO of League to Save Lake Tahoe.
“We've only spent less than 1/4 of the funding that was authorized through this current act. So we're hoping to get it extended for another 10 years so the important Lake saving projects can get on the ground,” Goodman Collins said.
Since the Act’s passage in 2016, Lake Tahoe Environmental Improvement Program partners have implemented hundreds of projects and supported nearly 2,000 jobs per year.
Nearly 80 percent of the Lake Tahoe watershed is under federal ownership, board chair Steve Spurlock said.
“Lake Tahoe is so blue and so beautiful, and so pristine, and so sought after by 15 million visitors a year. But it wouldn't be that way without work like this, without the projects that the federal money goes to, that lake would look dramatically different,” Spurlock said.
These federal dollars have been fundamental for projects such as the recovery of one of Tahoe’s native fish, which has significant cultural value to the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, chairman Serrell Smokey said.
“The Washoe tribe still currently runs about seven projects out of Lake Tahoe for conservation, restoration and reimplementation of the original Lahontan cutthroat trout in the waters, fixing the watershed streams that come down to the mountains,” Smokey said.
In March 2023, a bill to extend the authorization was reintroduced by Cortez Masto with the support of other legislators.
