Old-growth trees cut down on Tahoe's west shore

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is trying to determine how many trees greater than 30 inches in diameter were cut in violation of a law designed to protect the little old-growth timber remaining in the Tahoe Basin.

Preliminary counts indicate more than 30 were cut, said Kim Johnson, a forester with TRPA's enforcement unit. The agency learned more than a dozen loads of cut logs were trucked from the site to a mill in Quincy, Calif., before anyone became aware of the problem.

"There were a lot of trees cut down that weren't authorized," Johnson said. "It's real serious, definitely."

The cutting occurred during a project to remove dead and dying trees from 113 acres of land owned by the Tahoe City Public Utility District just south of Homewood Ski Resort. The district contracted the job to the Menasha Corp., of Grass Valley, Calif., which in turn hired loggers who cut the trees in April.

Problems could extend beyond violation of TRPA's old-growth ordinance. At the direction of the agency, Menasha has hired an old-growth expert to assess overall damage to the timber stand, including impacts on forest canopy and wildlife habitat.

Dave Antonucci, general manager of the Tahoe City Public Utility District, said "what did or did not happen" at the logging site is still being determined.

"We do want to get this resolved," Antonucci said. "It was never our intention to do anything but a project for forest health."

The project calls into question TRPA's ability to enforce its year-old old-growth ordinance, said Dave Roberts of the League to Save Lake Tahoe.

Roberts says league representative counted 36 stumps of old growth trees, and he wants a stiff fine for each violation.

"Obviously we're hugely disappointed by this," Roberts said Wednesday. "It's exactly the type of logging operation we don't want in the Tahoe Basin. Essentially what they've done is set that area back 100 years."

Roberts said it looks like the loggers did the opposite of what they were supposed to. While removing the large trees, which could be 90 to 150 years old, workers left small and dead trees, ones which contribute more to wildfire hazard.

"It was the classic timber deal where you're just thinking about the commercial aspect, taking the biggest trees," he said. "They didn't do that forest any favors at all. You don't have to be a forest expert to see what happened. They totally, flagrantly violated the old-growth ordinance."

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