LAKE TAHOE, Calif./Nev. – As Lake Tahoe continues to contend with the usage of glyphosate by the U.S. Forest Service in 2028, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the makers of Roundup in a ruling on Thursday. But organizations and agencies in the Tahoe Basin are considering how to respond to the concerns around the herbicide.
Supreme Court ruling
The Supreme Court ruled that Bayer, which now produces Roundup after acquiring the original producer Monsanto, will not face failure-to-warn lawsuits in state courts because federal regulations find the cancer link unlikely. These regulations do not require a warning label, though the World Health Organization classified the chemical as “probably carcinogenic” in 2015.
Bayer is still pledging $7.25 billion to a class-action settlement that will resolve remaining claims, but the decision made by the Supreme Court will likely strike down other lawsuits that claim that their exposure resulted in them developing cancer—one of the major concerns of people in areas where glyphosate is being sprayed.
In the Tahoe area, others have also expressed concern over the high rates of ALS (also called Lou Gehrig’s disease), the potential impacts to wildlife and the ecosystem, as well as the potential runoff of glyphosate into the lake.
This particular concern comes from the use of other chemicals that may have run into the lake through the Caldor Fire burn scar, which is directly in contact with the watershed of Lake Tahoe. While the U.S. Forest Service has said that the glyphosate would be sprayed with backpack sprayers rather than an aerial or aquatic treatment, it doesn’t mitigate concerns that it’ll contaminate the snow, lake and watershed through runoff.
While there were several calls in Tahoe to file lawsuits against the Forest Service, the Supreme Court’s ruling may have a chilling effect on those lawsuits on the basis of cancer risk.
At the lake
Multiple people and organizations have asked the surrounding counties, the city of South Lake Tahoe and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) to take action to prevent glyphosate spraying at the Caldor Fire burn scar and to halt the spraying that has happened at areas outside of the TRPA’s jurisdiction, such as at Sierra-at-Tahoe, which was sprayed last spring.
The city of South Lake Tahoe has taken a stance largely against the herbicide, as led by Mayor Cody Bass, and an item on the matter will appear on a future city council agenda. However, the council has discussed that it’s unlikely that they have the jurisdiction to sue the U.S. Forest Service on the matter.
However, Bass, who sits on the TRPA’s governing board, requested that the board prohibit the use of synthetic herbicides.
The TRPA already discourages the use of synthetic herbicides, and their letter to the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit requested that the Forest Service meet with TRPA and the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board. It also requests that they discuss further strategies to “minimize herbicide use to the greatest extent feasible.”
According to U.S. Forest Service maps, 2026 spraying has already been done in the Eldorado National Forest, including areas like Plummer Ridge and Leoni Caldor Road. Some of these areas were already treated with glyphosate and will be for the next 5-10 years according to the U.S. Forest Service’s own FAQ on the matter.
El Dorado County District 5 Supervisor Brooke Laine said she hadn’t heard concerns from other supervisors. She told the Tribune that she was conflicted on the issue because Roundup is also used in urban areas and at people’s homes. “I would be much more concerned if they were spraying it out of airplanes where it could go anywhere, but that’s really not the case,” said Laine. “It’s being directly applied to only specific plants and they’ve been doing it for a long time.”
While the Forest Service told Mother Jones that they did not plan to spray the 42,431 acres this year or next, which was also communicated by the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit to Tahoe residents, there have been no updates on where exactly in that acreage they plan to spray or when the spraying will happen after 2027.
Laine said, “I’m glad the Forest Service declared they will not be using it in the Basin at least through 2027, and I think that gives all of us enough time to examine other alternatives that don’t have harmful effects to humans, that could get into our water sources and wildlife, but still would let us take care of our forests.”
Groups like Protect Tahoe have urged the TRPA to make a full ban on synthetic herbicides, while also requesting the USDA (which the U.S. Forest Service belongs to), senators, representatives and Tahoe organizations like Keep Tahoe Blue to advocate alongside them. Bass also spoke at Protect Tahoe’s town hall at the Y earlier this month.
As of TRPA’s most recent governing board meeting on June 24, executive director Julie Regan said their comment letter still hadn’t received response from the Forest Service, but are expecting a response any day. However, the TRPA has expressed that they feel confident about the possibility of having an in-depth, scientific conversation about herbicide use and the possibility of determining other options.
The TRPA will have an item regarding glyphosate usage on their July agenda.
Kelly Ryerson, also known as Glyphosate Girl, is one of the major voices pushing against the use of glyphosate. She, along with a coalition of Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) advocates, has been staunchly opposed to the synthetic herbicide. At the TRPA governing board, Ryerson expressed her interest in FireHawk, a bioherbicide alternative to glyphosate.
While the Environmental Protection Agency previously stated that glyphosate is safe to use, the agency will likely be announcing its updated safety assessment later this year.
