Beaches and parks are crowded, town centers are packed with people, even hiking and biking trails are busy with users, and many locals, myself included, feel like they can’t enjoy their own backyards. There has always been a delicate balance in the Tahoe Sierra between tourism and community, but we’ve lost that balance in the last few months.
Our communities can’t meet the demand of our visitors. Our facilities are overburdened. We don’t have enough trash cans or trash services or enough toilets to meet demand. We were all unprepared for the influx of visitors this summer, or for the resulting trash, traffic, graffiti and noise.
But these are visible, unsanitary and disgusting symptoms of a much larger problem – our communities are being overtaxed by too many people. Our recreation facilities have not kept up with the demand by visitors, and this isn’t a new problem. Locals have been complaining about this for years in public meetings and on social media. But, with more people trying to escape the pandemic pandemonium they are experiencing at home by coming to Tahoe, our community has reached a breaking point.
Trash is piled up on the beaches, toilet paper and human waste are left in front yards, dirty diapers are tossed in the bushes along the Truckee River, cars are parked illegally on roadways and in some cases on town sidewalks, there are late-night parties in nearly every neighborhood, crowds of people are gathering in rental houses in violation of state orders and common sense, graffiti seems to be popping up everywhere, and there’s a total lack of respect for Tahoe. A lack of common decency.
I made a choice to live in Tahoe for the same reasons that visitors want to escape to Tahoe – the fresh air (when it’s not smokey), the quiet of the evening on Lake Tahoe, the star-filled sky at night, the alpenglow at sunset, the thousands of trails to explore, the breathtaking beaches, the allure of Big Blue.
I understand that visitors need that in their lives now more than ever. And, we are all willing to share our homes with each of them. But, only if they pack out their garbage, use public restrooms (even if it means you need to leave the beach), pick up your dog’s waste and take it home with you if you need to, don’t build a fire for any reason anywhere, stop tagging rocks and rail tunnels, stay 6 feet away from everyone on the beach (even if you need to skip the beach that day) and wear a mask. Please be safe, be kind and pack out your trash (even if that means putting it in the car and taking it with you).
To local officials, it’s time to take responsibility and take action right now. You serve the people of our counties and cities, not visitors. Do whatever it takes to address these issues immediately. It’s easy to reallocate funds and direct them right now to more trash cans, more trash service and to pay people to clean our beaches, our parks, our trails and our towns every single day. And, I mean the counties and cities not only covering the cost for their parks and beaches but also to cover every piece of public land in our communities. Put Dumpsters, not trash cans, and portable toilets at every beach until the numbers of visitors subside. Then, figure out right now how to put more permanent public restrooms at our beaches and in our town centers and then build them.
The consequences are dire – wildfires, declining clarity in Lake Tahoe, wildlife suffering and communities outraged. In the end, it’s about tourism itself. If we don’t clean up Tahoe and protect it, the visitors will stop coming one day and that would be the worst consequence of all.
To do our part to help educate visitors and the community, Tahoe Weekly will be examining the underlying causes, as well as the impacts on our recreation facilities and our health and safety, in a series over the next month. In the first part, Priya Hutner looks at the root cause of these issues – too many people at once in an overtaxed community. She’ll cover litter and other related issues in upcoming editions and at TheTahoeWeekly.com.
