Obama and Brown want more green to keep Lake Tahoe blue
Even though $1.9 billion in public and private money has been spent on restoring Lake Tahoe over the past two decades, President Obama and California’s top political leaders said Wednesday more is needed to finish the job.
“It’s not going to happen if we just pay lip service to conversation and don’t do what’s needed,” Obama said in outlining a plan that would bring more than $10 billion in private investment to help nationally on conservation projects.
Because “climate and conservation are challenges that go hand in hand, our conservation mission is more urgent than ever,” he said.
Though his colleagues praised him for his environmental progress — particularly for placing a record more than 260 million acres of land under federal protection during his presidency — Obama was briefly heckled by an antifracking activist holding a sign that said “Keep it in the ground.”
On his first visit to Lake Tahoe, Obama announced more than $30 million in new federal water, wildlife and fire protection projects for the region as well as a new public-private partnership aimed at restoring 25,000 acres around the Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, through 2025.
The Environmental Protection Agency will offer $230,000 in grants for infrastructure to reduce storm water runoff in the region in an attempt to improve Lake Tahoe’s water quality.
“A single wildfire in a dangerously flammable Lake Tahoe Basin could cause enough erosion to erase decades of progress when it comes to water quality,” Obama said.
[...] the drought also endangers one of the epicenters of the world’s food production in California.
Additional federal conservation measures were announced Wednesday for Southern California, too, where Department of the Interior officials said the area of the Salton Sea, in Imperial and Riverside counties, faces deteriorating air quality and massive fish kills.
A 2014 report from the Pacific Institute, a think tank that studies water issues, estimated the lake’s problems could cost California $70 billion in lower property values and increased health care needs.
Joining federal and California officials in trying to improve conditions around the Salton Sea will be the Water Funder Initiative, a coalition of philanthropic foundations that announced Wednesday it would donate $10 million over five years to the region’s needs.