Gore returns to Nevada for Lake Tahoe Summit

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who orchestrated the first presidential summit focused on Lake Tahoe's environmental challenges, on Monday announced that former Vice President Al Gore will return to Tahoe's shores for the 17th annual forum highlighting the Sierra's crown jewel.

"The thing that I thought would be a photo-op ... turned out to be a two-day story around the world," Reid, reflecting on the first presidential forum, said in a conference call with reporters.

Gore and President Bill Clinton came to the alpine lake 1997 to host the forum focusing on the environmental challenges within the Tahoe Basin. It capped weeks of visits by cabinet members, town hall meetings and gatherings of scientific researchers, academics, transportation officials and businesses leaders who brainstormed on the importance of Lake Tahoe and how its survival was tied to myriad factors — from development and snow runoff to forest health and air pollution.

Since then, more than $1.55 billion in combined funding from private, federal, state and local government sources have financed long-rage environmental improvement programs within the Tahoe Basin.

TRPA - Tahoe Regional Planning Association.

Hey, it’s great to PLAN, right? Yeah, ‘cept these are actually the Kommissars who dictate what you can and can’t do with your (very expensive) property.

Ah, you have tons of dead trees right next to your house...? It’s huge FIRE HAZARD..?

Nah..! That’s a home for a shivering, crying OWL FAMILY. And sighting platforms for at-risk African-American chipmunks.

So, ah...NAH, ya can’t clear that brush and fallen dead trees...

Five years ago there was a HUGE FIRE and tons of folks on the south shore of Lake Tahoe LOST THEIR HOMES because of TRPA insanity.

Oh, wow, that made for some REALLY LIVELY meetings and (red-faced screamed) “questions”.

Gore is REALLLLY going to help all this, yup.

"The thing that I thought would be a photo-op ... turned out to be a two-day story around the world," Reid, reflecting on the first presidential forum, said in a conference call with reporters.

Yeah. Funny how these things happen.

Kinda like your modest little excursions into real estate resulted in multi-million dollar windfalls.

Such luck!

I lived, for many years in Tahoe Valley along the Upper Trukee River where 240+ homes were lost to a raging fire on my birthday five years ago. My [former] home and several others I built over the years were lost.

When I lived there in the 60s, 70s and early 80s we had active forestry management programs. In the summers we cleared dead fall and standing dead trees for firewood. Home owners were encouraged to clear areas around their homes of ground fuel and to plant green space buffers to prevent fires from jumping to residential structures. We cleared broken limbs and fallen trees on undeveloped vacant lots among the existing homes where people now lived.

In the 80s liberals from the Bay Area and L.A. started moving to the valley. Living there wasn't enough for them. They had to jump right into politics and start making rules for all of us to live by. Ironically, the lefties thought of themselves as some sort of hippies because they had floppy hats and sandals. While, in fact, a good number of the valley residents were actually free souls the liberals wanted to be like, yet we had matured and learned to value liberty along with the environment we had learned to protect. Many of us were veterans who had served and come home to make our lives in the mountains we loved.

It wasn't long before the new liberals were on all sorts of boards and when they couldn't get elected, they found ways to create more boards and non profits that sucked up tax payer money to take away our rights.

They outlawed clearing the forests and declared that planting grass around our homes should be stopped because it wasn't natural in the high mountains. Now, we know the outcome of their activism. Hundreds of families lost all they had and thousands of acres were charred in the process.

Will any of them pay for their sins? Of course not. You see, they are well intentioned liberals and outcomes don't matter as long as they try.

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