Placer's Kranz calls for mechanical thinning in stream zones

David Bunker and Adam Jensen, ajensen@tahoedailytribune.com
August 23, 2007

Placer County's representative on the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's governing board on Wednesday called for loosening regulations on forest thinning near streams around Lake Tahoe, citing the fire danger the areas pose.

The agency's board took no action on the proposal, which would also allow residents to bolster their defensible space without agency permits. But agency officials said they have already made many of the changes requested by Kranz.

Water quality regulators at the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board said their regulations were modified in 1995 to allow mechanical thinning in stream environment zones. The water board's regulations governing stream-zone thinning are nearly identical to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's rules, which have allowed mechanical thinning in stream zones since 2004.

Under the TRPA and the water board's regulation, the work must be done with low-impact vehicles, and the applicant must prove that the equipment will not damage the fragile stream habitat.

But officials with the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the U.S. Forest Service say that regulations on forest thinning in stream zones can sideline a project for two or three years. A Forest Service spokesman said stream areas are some of the most dangerously overgrown in the Tahoe Basin.

"They burn very fast and with great intensity," said Rex Norman, a spokesman for the Forest Service in Lake Tahoe. "They do have the potential for carrying fire."

Mike Vollmer, the vegetation manager for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, said the TRPA's newly formed committee to investigate the prevention of catastrophic fires will discuss any changes to the agency's regulations.

"The climate's right to look at it again," Vollmer said.

Kranz's letter, entitled "Act Now," was read in part at Wednesday's Tahoe Regional Planning Agency board meeting. The item caused little discussion among board members or the agency's staff.

"We know what we need to do. We need to remove not only dead, dying and diseased trees, but also low-lying brush, small trees and limbs. The time for talk is over," read Kranz's letter.

Kranz's call to action mirrors a similar declaration by fellow Republican John Doolittle, the congressional representative for Truckee and Tahoe, urging agencies to drop their prohibition on mechanized thinning in stream zones.

That statement came in July as Doolittle toured the destruction caused by the Angora Fire in South Lake Tahoe.