Sunday, March 16, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Tahoe Waterfest '97 leaders announced plans last week to hold the Tahoe Environmental Challenge over the Labor Day weekend. The group has raised $40,000 in prize money to reward the most innovative alternatives.
Group founder Steve Goodall of Zephyr Cove, Nev., said he came up with the idea for the contest during recent debate over the issue of pollution from boat engines at Lake Tahoe.
"We intend to promote practical alternatives to the use of gasoline power on Lake Tahoe," he told the Tahoe Daily Tribune.
Goodall said he's been bothered by a nagging sense of guilt since the first time he refueled a boat on the lake in 1974.
"The first time I fueled up, we had a spill of gasoline," he said. "It almost gave me a heart attack to see an oil slick on Lake Tahoe."
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's governing board last month set in motion a proposal to phase out old two-cycle marine engines from the lake within two years.
If adopted by the TRPA in June, the ban would force the owners of all boats powered by such engines to convert to a new generation of cleaner engines.
That includes Jet Skis, Sea Doos and Waverunners, as well as many of the sailboats, fishing boats and law enforcement patrol vessels on the lake.
Goodall said his nonprofit group plans to use the event's official boat, a 20-foot Wellcraft Eclipse, to demonstrate the possibilities of alternative fuels.
The group will first test the efficiency of the boat's conventional fuel-injected, four-stroke engine and measure its emissions.
Then the group will convert the engine to run on propane and retest the boat to compare emissions between the four-stroke engine and propane-fueled engine.
The difference in emisions will help illustrate the advantage of alternative fuels, Goodall said.
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