SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — A father-and-son team with deep roots in Northern Nevada plumbing is bringing their trusted family tradition to the Lake Tahoe Basin.
CBO Plumbing Tahoe (cbotahoe.com), owned by Joe Ortiz and his 18-year-old son Canyon Ortiz of Gardnerville, Nevada, is now licensed and serving homeowners, vacation rental owners, and businesses throughout South Lake Tahoe and the greater Tahoe Basin.
Canyon Ortiz represents the third generation of his family in the plumbing trade. The Ortiz family has been providing professional plumbing services in Northern Nevada since 1985. After decades of serving customers across the region, Joe and Canyon made the strategic decision late last year to obtain California licensing, allowing them to extend their expertise into Northern California and the unique high-altitude challenges of Lake Tahoe.
“Growing up in the family business, I’ve learned the value of honest work, reliability, and treating every customer like family. At 18, I’m proud to carry on our legacy as a third-generation plumber and excited to help Tahoe residents and visitors with the specialized services they need in this mountain environment.” — Canyon Ortiz, Third-Generation Plumber, CBO Plumbing Tahoe
“We’ve built our reputation on upfront pricing, clean work, and showing up when it matters most — especially during harsh winters. Getting licensed in California was a natural next step so we can support the Tahoe community the same way we’ve supported Northern Nevada for generations.” — Joe Ortiz, Owner, CBO Plumbing Tahoe
CBO Plumbing Tahoe specializes in the unique demands of high-altitude and mountain living, including 24/7 emergency response for frozen and burst pipes during snowstorms, professional winterization and seasonal maintenance for cabins and vacation rentals, drain and sewer services including hydro jetting, pipe repair and re-piping for older homes, water heater installation and repair (tankless and standard), leak detection and repair to prevent water damage and mold, fixture installation and upgrades, and preventative maintenance and inspections.
The company emphasizes “big-city expertise with small-town reliability,” offering honest, upfront pricing and discreet, clean service that vacation rental managers and homeowners appreciate. CBO Plumbing Tahoe proudly serves the entire Lake Tahoe Basin, including South Lake Tahoe, Meyers, Tahoe City, Kings Beach, and surrounding areas on both the North and South Shores.
For more information or to schedule service, visit cbotahoe.com or call the 24/7 emergency line at (530) 539-1661.
CBO Plumbing Tahoe is a family-owned and operated plumbing company.Provided
To try and decide each week where and what to eat around the basin can be a challenge – there are so many amazing choices. In this feature we’ll dive into dishes that will surely satisfy those hunger pangs and leave you wondering where to go next.
Sure, you could have a sandwich with many of the ingredients in this week’s feature, but for some reason when you roll it all up in a freshly made crêpe it just hits different. Don’t ask me why, it just does. And if you don’t believe me, read on and see if you want to give it a try for yourself.
When you’re spouting about crêpes, I feel that that’s where we need to start. The thin and delicate pancake needs to be slightly sweet and perfectly balanced between chewy with hints of crispiness. When the dish is in the name of the restaurant, you have to figure this item is about as dialed in as anything on the menu and I’m pleased to report you do not have to worry. It’s about as perfect as one can get, which makes everything else in the dish that much more elevated.
It’s stuffed with oven roasted turkey, spinach, mozzarella cheese, and cherry tomatoes with a salsa macha optional if you want to ramp up the flavor. In my opinion, the addition of salsa macha is about the most no-brainer decision you can make on a given day. Their version is an oil-based Mexican salsa with roasted chiles de arbol and hints of cranberries for sweetness and packs a palette punch that leaves a lingering taste that makes you want to keep diving in for more.
I feel the other items are pretty straightforward and you can get a sense of the freshness with the cherry tomatoes and spinach, but where this eating experience takes it to another level is in the warm blanket of the crêpe that wraps you up and doesn’t want to let go.
Bearry Sweet Crêpes is located in the Ski Run Marina at 900 Ski Run Blvd Ste 118 in South Lake Tahoe. For more information follow them on Instagram at bearrysweetcrepes or give them a call at 530-237-1779.
LAKE TAHOE, Calif/Nev. – It’s a World Cup Group Stage face-off between USA and Australia this Friday, June 19, and now is your chance to catch some of the global action at one of Lake Tahoe’s many venues as both teams go head-to-head in Seattle.
Whether you’re looking for an action-packed sports bar or a vibrant and elevated gathering, these locations are sure to leave you feeling electric as you rep your favorite team – all tournament long.
Cascade Kitchens is your go-to hub for all things World Cup as they will be showing tournament matches while highlighting games from USA, Mexico, Columbia, Argentina and France.
The beauty of Cascade Kitchens is that it already serves as a place for local restaurants to showcase their delicious, globally-inspired fares, and for the World Cup, restaurant partners are going full throttle to represent their teams. Extra TVs are scattered all throughout including on their patio as World Cup decorations adorn the food hall.
“At Cascade Kitchens, we’re most excited about being a community hub. We love being a place where people from all different parts of the community can come, gather and celebrate,” said Fran Faulknor, Owner of Cascade Kitchens. “We think the World Cup is a great event to exemplify that. It brings the world together, it brings people from all different countries and cultures to unite for the same shared interests, and it allows you to share that excitement across the community.”
The Thirsty Bear will be giving a dollar off any draft beer if you show up wearing a jersey that represents one of the playing teams, and each of the food hall’s participating restaurants will be providing their own specials, including Taste of Columbia’s empanada group special, and Tacomer’s Taco Tuesday $3 deals.
“We’re really happy to be able to provide such a great space to watch these types of games for everybody,” Faulknor added.
What better way to spend time between halves than playing a round of mini golf at one of the South Shore’s most popular sports bars?
Tipsy Putt will be showing the match on their big-screen TVs. Come in wearing your favorite soccer jersey during any game and they’ll even upgrade your 16 oz beer to the next size up for free.
If you’re hungry, order a round of 20 crispy, bone-in savory-seasoned wings to share with friends and family, or get a taste of their mouthwatering pulled pork sandwich and swat at any hands who try to take one of the chips served on the side.
“The World Cup brings out the best kind of energy. Passionate fans, unforgettable moments, and the excitement of seeing the entire world come together. We’ll be cheering for Team USA every step of the way, but we’re just as excited to watch every match and every celebration with fellow fans throughout the tournament,” said Brandon Robinson, CEO of Tipsy Putt. “We’ll be showing all the games at Tipsy Putt so we don’t miss a minute.”
The Woods will be hosting all the World Cup matches throughout the entirety of the tournament in their charming, two-story restaurant lined with TVs on both story levels.
During the USA versus Australia match on Friday, June 19, there will be a Michelob Ultra sampling promo starting at 2:30 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. along with showing all other games playing that day.
Their specials include 50 percent off an appetizer with the purchase of a beer tower, valid for two per customer per day. Beer tower options include Modelo, Pacifico, Michelob Ultra and The Woods Mexican Lager.
Try one of their refreshing cocktails like the Pinktini or the Blackberry Fizz while you enjoy flavorful chili nachos or their sweet and tasty croissant beignets.
“We look forward to fans coming to cheer on their team and enjoy good food, cold drinks and lots of sports action,” said Drew Nichols, owner of The Woods. “We’ll also have World Cup inspired giveaway cups and other fun items to make it a World Cup you won’t forget!”
The Woods will also be opening early to accommodate any matches that play earlier than their normal operating hours. Be sure to call (530) 600-0921 for more information or to confirm their hours for a specific match.
The Woods is located at 3115 Harrison Ave in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
World Cup with a view at Riva Grill – South Lake Tahoe
South Lake Tahoe’s waterfront gem, Riva Grill, will be showing matches throughout the entirety of the World Cup.
“Come watch the games at Riva Grill—where every match has a lakefront seat! Don’t miss a minute of the action,” said Thatyana Allen, Group Sales and Marketing Manager at Riva Grill.
This location is the perfect spot for those looking to enjoy not only the World Cup, but also the breathtaking views of Lake Tahoe overlooking the Ski Run Marina.
From their delectable Prime Rib French Dip to savory wood-fired pizzas, washed down with their iconic Wet Woody, it’s the perfect recipe for a great weekend celebrating your team.
“We’ll be showing every FIFA World Cup match on all of our TVs throughout the restaurant, including our 80″ big-screen TV at the bar. Whether you’re enjoying lunch, dinner, or drinks, you can cheer on your favorite team while taking in the beautiful lake views,” Allen said.
Riva Grill is located at 900 Ski Run Blvd in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
Live music, brews, and World Cup views at Alibi Ale Works – Truckee
While both Alibi Ale Works Public House locations will be showing World Cup matches through July 19 in Incline Village and Truckee, Truckee Public House is celebrating the USA versus Australia Group Stage match with live music and delicious beer on Friday, June 19.
The Detours Band will be kicking off the festivities by playing the National Anthem on guitar before everyone enjoys watching the match on Alibi’s massive projector screen and their two 80″ TV screens – no matter where you are, there’s good viewing.
“The World Cup is the biggest sporting event on the globe and it brings together fans and countries from around the entire world,” said Kevin Drake, Owner of Alibi Ale Works. “That inspires me because that’s how we work at Alibi, too. On the food and beer side, we really try to take inspiration from a lot of different parts of the world.”
After the match, jam out with The Detours Band as they perform a live afternoon set while you sip on a crisp Kolsch or a Tropic Thunder Porter, fresh from the tap.
“Beer and soccer pair really well together,” added Drake as he noted that people never feel rushed while at Alibi Ale Works. Hang out, sip on your beer and enjoy the atmosphere.
Be sure to catch the next USA game against Turkey at Truckee Public House on June 25 at 5:30 p.m. as they host a World Cup Viewing Party fundraiser to support U12 Truckee soccer teams on their journey to Sweden for the Gothia Cup 2026. Enter a raffle for chances to win ski gear, outdoor equipment, lift tickets, and more.
Alibi Ale Works – Truckee Public House is located at 10069 Bridge St in Truckee, Calif.
Alibi Ale Works – Incline Public House is located at 931 Tahoe Blvd in Incline Village, Nev.
Bill’s Sportsbook World Cup matches at Golden Nugget – Stateline
Bill’s Sportsbook is the perfect place to catch tournament matches from around the globe. From their large-format screens to their sportsbook seating, celebrate the World Cup inside Golden Nugget Lake Tahoe Hotel and Casino.
Food and beverage offerings will be available throughout the day such as Bill’s Burger, Fat Cat (CNN Top 10 award winner) and Ultimate Cheeseburger, as well as traditional or boneless wings, loaded nachos, crispy chicken or Wild Bill’s Buffalo Chicken Sandwich, Billy Cheesesteak, Mini B’s Sliders for group sharing, and sweets like the Cookies & Dream signature shake.
Choose from a wide selection of domestic and craft beers, frozen and classic margaritas, and signature cocktails including the Gold Rush and Bloody Good Mary.
“We’re excited to welcome guests to Bill’s Sportsbook during soccer’s biggest event of the year. Whether they’re stopping by to catch a match, enjoy great food and drinks or take advantage of the full sportsbook experience, Bill’s offers an unmatched atmosphere to enjoy the action throughout the tournament,” said Jason Sides, Senior Vice President & General Manager at Golden Nugget.
You can even up the ante by participating in live odds and in-game wagering at Bill’s Sportsbook.
Bill’s Sportsbook is located inside the Golden Nugget Lake Tahoe Hotel and Casino at 50 U.S. Highway 50 in Stateline, Nev.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – City council deliberated on what to do with the previous funding source that came from taxing cannabis businesses, which funded organizations like the Tahoe Alliance for Safe Kids (TASK) and Tahoe Youth and Family Services’ prevention programs. Mayor Cody Bass recused himself from the item.
Council had previously cut the tax rate on cannabis businesses to 3% in November. Even cannabis business owners like Cannablue CEO Jess Carlson acknowledged that the work of these nonprofits was supported by the tax.
The revenue from it was originally set to benefit nonprofits that mitigate the negative effects of cannabis, as well as pay for a dedicated officer overseeing regulatory compliance for the cannabis businesses.
City staff member Sara Letton presented on the potential motions to be made, especially as a remaining balance of $400,000 from the previous fiscal year could still be utilized as grants for the nonprofits.
Letton outlined that they could implement the program for another year with the remaining funds, then discontinue it; continue the program under reduced funding; or eliminate the program. Through elimination of the program, they could add the funds to the general fund, consider a broader grant program or consider the item at a future budget meeting.
At the request of councilmember Scott Robbins, Chief Jeff Roberson outlined the duties and activities of the cannabis overseeing officer: permitting, inspections of businesses, background checks on employees and security system access. “We have been able to use that information to solve crimes,” said Roberson.
Representatives from Tahoe Youth and Family Services, Mountain High Recovery Center, Tahoe Coalition for the Homeless and TASK emphasized the importance of the funding and urged the city to provide it, especially as it helps them secure other funding sources.
Other public comments were in support of the city continuing to provide some kind of funding for the nonprofits, with comments that the criteria could be expanded beyond just the mitigation of negative effects from cannabis.
Councilmembers Robbins and Heather Horgan were in support of the city providing financial support, especially because federal and state funding sources have dried up. Horgan emphasized the importance of prevention of substance abuse and its connection to the need for more mental health services, which Barton Hospital’s community needs assessment consistently identifies as a need.
Councilmember David Jinkens and Mayor Pro Tem Keith Roberts were also interested in continuing support and implementing metrics to measure the impacts. Jinkens was interested in the city taking responsibility for where the grants go.
The council eventually moved to fund the program this year at $400,000 and directed staff to find a long-term funding approach for the program. They also moved to form an ad hoc subcommittee consisting of Horgan and Robbins which would evaluate funding for future years in alignment with city priorities.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – On Tuesday, city council met to discuss the formation of an ad hoc electric utility committee, discuss getting a new city attorney and have a public hearing on new refuse fees. They also gave keys to the city to Lake Tahoe Community College figures and passed a motion to provide cannabis tax revenue funds to nonprofits for another year, which can be read about in their own stories.
Consent agenda and public hearing
One consent agenda item was on city council protocols. In the recent past, meetings have dragged for hours and the council held a special meeting to create new protocols. These included having earlier agenda publications, the mayor’s discretion to reorder agenda items to improve public participation and adding a timer to councilmember displays when speaking.
Dan May spoke on the item and noted that the council should also use the “questioning” section of their process for actual questions, not just statements. He also told city council that he was glad to hear their thought process on how they voted and what they care about, but that it was better fitted to op-eds rather than speeches during city council time.
On the consent agenda was also the South Tahoe Refuse delinquent refuse fees report, which was also passed by the planning commission, where they heard no objections. The item was brief with city council as well, so South Tahoe Refuse will file the report with the county to property tax rolls for collection.
Electricity utility committee
In previous years, Liberty Utilities and the city discussed a franchise agreement which did not come to pass, though the company continued to pay franchise fees to the city. Liberty recently approached the city again with the interest in speaking on a franchise agreement again. The committee established in the motion would engage with their discussion.
Councilmember Scott Robbins said part of the reason for the franchise agreement falling through before was the limitation of solar to 1 megawatt, which would have stopped South Tahoe Public Utilities District from building their solar array.
Mayor Cody Bass noted that because an election is coming up, Mayor Pro Tem Keith Roberts and councilmember David Jinkens would be the only members guaranteed to stay on city council. Jinkens agreed and noted that that they could provide more continuity on the discussion.
With the additional comment that a franchise agreement would ultimately be brought back to the entire council for approval, the motion to establish the committee with Roberts and Jinkens passed unanimously.
City attorney services
City attorney Heather Stroud announced her resignation in May, and her final day at the city will be July 1. After proposals were submitted for interim services, city council interviewed those candidates in closed session and selected Sergio Rudin from Best Best & Krieger LLP as the interim city attorney.
Rudin will serve for six months as they seek out a new city attorney and be paid an amount not exceeding $200,000 for the entire contract.
The city manager would be responsible for finding an executive search firm, which would then recruit a new city attorney. The item requested $50,000 for the process
Jinkens suggested that the council approve the executive search firm, which Bass disagreed with, as it would slow down the process. Robbins also disagreed, saying that they would not provide value to approving the search firm, and their appointment of the city attorney would be much more important.
With the addition that the search firm be experienced in placing city attorneys in California, the motion passed unanimously.
Dissolution of the South Tahoe Joint Powers Parking Financing Authority (STJPPFA)
In 2002, the city and the South Tahoe Redevelopment Agency established the STJPPFA to facilitate the financing of improvements like the public parking garage. The agreement went until 2042, but the bonds were fully paid off in January 2024.
The council approved the motion unanimously.
Agenda planning calendar and city council reports
The State of the City Address will be taking place on June 24, starting at 4:30 p.m. City council will be holding a special meeting in July to discuss the tobacco moratorium and potentially the California Tahoe Conservancy land exchange.
Stroud spoke to the council as it was her last meeting. “I have been sitting in this seat for almost eight years and I really appreciate having the opportunity to serve this community… I like to think I left things better now than when I got here.” She expressed that she felt the city was in good hands with Rudin.
Bass said that Stroud really stabilized the city legally, especially during his initial time serving on referendum. He also presented Stroud with a key to the city.
City clerk Susan Blankenship said, “Yes, we will get along fine without you, but we will miss you very much. You make being here bearable some days. I really need you.” City manager Hilary Roverud also said she was looking forward to maintaining a friendship with Stroud beyond her position. Councilmember Heather Horgan also expressed her support for professional connections with women like Roverud and Stroud.
Blankenship also noted that the mayor issued a proclamation for the 90th anniversary of the movie “Rose-Marie” which was partially filmed in Lake Tahoe.
With the upcoming election, Blankenship expressed that she hoped for a boring election season. “That’s what clerks love.”
The Bijou connector trail on Al Tahoe is finishing up and Lake Link’s expansion to the rest of the city will be complete in mid-July.
The next regular city council meeting will take place on August 11.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Forest Service will publish a proposed climbing directive in the Federal Register and initiate a 30-day public comment period. This proposal establishes the agency’s first national direction for managing recreational climbing opportunities on national forests and grasslands that will include guidance for the use and maintenance of fixed anchors and equipment.
The updated proposal replaces a 2023 draft that was overtaken by new requirements in the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act, signed into law January 4, 2025. The EXPLORE Act directs federal land management agencies to recognize recreational climbing – including certain fixed anchors – as an appropriate use in congressionally designated wilderness areas.
“Recreational climbing continues to grow in popularity, with nearly 30 percent of all outdoor climbing occurring on National Forest System lands,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz. “This proposed directive provides much-needed national policy for climbing activities and gives local decision-makers the ability to work with partners, tribes, climbing organizations, and others to ensure visitors are having safe, responsible and accessible outdoor experiences.”
The outdoor recreation economy continues to grow, and the Forest Service is committed to promoting and increasing access to these special sites. Nationally, it is estimated there are nearly 10.3 million climbers in the United States, of which approximately 2.3 million participated in sport or boulder climbing and approximately 2.4 million participated in traditional ice or mountaineering climbing, according to the Outdoor Industry Association’s 2022 report on outdoor participation trends.
On the morning of June 17, 2001, Father’s Day, a campfire that wasn’t fully extinguished escaped and ignited one of the most dramatic wildfires in Truckee’s history. Driven by wind funneling down the canyon, low humidity, and critically dry fuels after a below-average snowpack season, the Martis Fire tore through the landscape and bore down on the small community of Floriston along the Truckee River. The numbers are still staggering to think about: 14,000 acres burned and $18 million in damage.
But it could have been far worse. The fire was stopped in its tracks along a ridge in Floriston, thanks in part, to the unglamorous work of a single man. Darin Bue had bought his property on Tamarack Street in 1993. Even then, before defensible space was a widely understood concept, something told him the forest pressing up against his home was a problem. He started cutting, piling, and doing some broadcast burning on the steep slope behind his house.
The 2001 Martis FireProvided / Truckee Fire Protection District
“I got a lot of friction for that,” says Bue. “But the volume of material up there was overwhelming. I had an instinct about it and I just kept pecking away.” Ten years later, the Martis Fire arrived. As flames roared down the canyon, firefighters were able to set up within his cleared defensible space and use it as a staging ground to deflect the fire away from both his home and the town.
“That was one key factor that saved the town from burning down,” says Bue. Topography played a role, too. A rotor effect created an eddy effect that actually pulled embers away from Floriston rather than onto it, but the defensible space gave crews the foothold they needed to halt the flames in their tracks.
“This is why we spend so much time, energy and money investing in wildfire mitigation,” said Eric Horntvedt, Wildfire Prevention Manager with Truckee Fire Protection District. “Defensible space is the front line of protection against these damaging wildfires.”
Bue has continued the work ever since, expanding his fuel reduction efforts with the blessing of neighboring landowners, replacing aggressive snow brush and bitter cherry with plants that are more fire resistant. Most recently, he even enlisted a pack of goats to help manage the vegetation. “I think it’s important to have a relationship with the land,” says Bue, “and an understanding of what makes a forest healthy or unhealthy. The signs are all out there and easy to see if you look.”
Today’s Warning Signs
Drive through Truckee today and the landscape is deceptively reassuring, green hillsides, water still moving through creeks, soil that feels damp underfoot. Dawn Johnson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Reno, says this winter season was one of the strangest she’s seen. Liquid precipitation, that was made up of rain and snow combined, actually came in near normal at roughly 105% across the Tahoe and Truckee basins. But the storms were so warm that most of what fell came down as rain rather than snow.
“Your eyes are going to deceive you,” says Johnson. “The fact that we greened up so early and the snow melted so early means we’re not going to have the water when we typically see it, so fuels are going to be ready to burn earlier.”
That distinction matters. In the Sierra Nevada, snowpack is not just a scenic backdrop, it is a slow-release water storage system that feeds streams, rivers and soil moisture through the dry months. This year, that reservoir peaked around February 25 and melted off weeks ahead of schedule, with peak runoff arriving in late February and early March instead of the typical April-to-June window.
Comparing 2001 to 2026
There are some similarities between the two years, but it’s not quite a perfect match. Johnson says the two years show similar snowpack percentages by spring: the Truckee Basin sat at roughly 57% of normal as of April 1, 2001, with a peak snow water equivalent (SWE) of 69% on March 13, 2001. This year, the peak SWE in the Truckee Basin was 71% on Feb. 25, 2026. It was also a warm spring. 2001 was the eighth warmest spring on record. This year was the third warmest. While 2001 was itself a drought year, the years leading up to it were actually very wet.
“The melt off this year was significantly earlier, February-March,” adds Johnson, “and while there was some melt in March-April 2001, there were also storms into mid-late April, and the biggest snowmelt came late April and early May.”
One of the biggest differences is that this year we had near normal precipitation (105% for the water year as of June 1) and a snow drought from the overall warm winter, while in 2001, the Lake Tahoe and Truckee Basins were only at 60% of normal for precipitation as of June 1, 2001.
“It was dry, but it was not record-breaking dry,” Johnson says of 2001. “It was not shattering records, even with the drought.” The snowmelt that spring also followed a more typical curve, with runoff occurring in April and May and some additional late-season storms providing relief.
What made the Martis Fire so dangerous was a convergence of other factors: wind that aligned perfectly with the canyon topography, critically low humidity and an unstable atmosphere, conditions that can occur in any year regardless of snowpack. Those conditions are wildcards, but they are increasingly forecastable thanks to modern technology.
A similar convergence is happening right now, even if each individual factor isn’t quite the same. What may be most concerning about 2026 is not any single metric but the combination of factors coming together simultaneously, something Johnson said is genuinely unprecedented in her experience.
Wet years in recent seasons created a large and lush crop of lower-elevation grasses. Because snowpack was minimal at lower elevations this year, that grass crop never got compacted by snow, leaving it standing, aerated, and primed to burn. Meanwhile, the early snowmelt exposed timber fuels weeks ahead of schedule, accelerating their drying.
“Normally, most years, we either see the large fuels dry out, or we see the fine fuels dry out, both are problematic,” says Johnson. “I’ve talked to fire chiefs who’ve told me, in 25 years, they’ve never seen anything like this, where both large and fine fuels are at play. Typically, it’s one or the other.”
The late spring rains of recent weeks have provided some relief, but Johnson says it’s just delaying the inevitable. She also pushed back on the notion that fire season has clear boundaries. “We don’t have an off season anymore,” she said. “We just have high season and low season.” Fall, she noted, is a particular blind spot when people tend to relax as temperatures drop, but that is precisely when large wind events arrive and dry fuels are at their most dangerous after a long summer.
What Residents Can Do Right Now
The anniversary of the Martis Fire is, above all, a reminder that catastrophic fires don’t only happen in peak summer, and that individual action genuinely matters.
The Truckee Fire Protection District offers a wide array of programs, funded through Measure T, that offer help for the community, from home hardening rebates to free green waste disposal. “The biggest takeaway from the Martis Fire is for people to just pay attention and take extra care to prevent accidental fire starts,” says Horntvedt. “Be like Darin Bue and take preventative measures to keep your property and your community safe.”
A practical check list of to-do’s:
Create defensible space now, before conditions worsen. Don’t wait for a red flag warning.
Use the FREE green waste pick-up program. Funded by Measure T, this free resource runs through October. Don’t forget about green waste dumpster rebates as well for bigger jobs.
Cash in on home hardening rebates, it covers up to 50% of project costs up to $2,000.
Don’t be the cause of the next accidental fire! Drown your campfire completely before leaving your site, avoid using power equipment during the hottest and driest part of the day, don’t park over dry grass, make sure trailer chains are properly stowed so they don’t drag and spark on the pavement, and NEVER toss cigarette butts out of your window.
Visit www.truckeefire.org/wildfireprevention for a ton of resources and programs to help residents prepare and make their home fire safe and create a wildfire-resilient Truckee.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — As more Lake Tahoe students bike, walk, and ride e-bikes to school and around their neighborhoods, local partners are working to ensure they have the skills and confidence to do so safely, according to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) and Tahoe Bicycle Coalition.
National traffic safety data shows that among youth riders, children aged 10 to 14 are at the highest risk of bicycle-related injuries. Throughout last month, a pilot program by TRPA and the Tahoe Bicycle Coalition allowed fourth-grade students across the Lake Tahoe Unified School District to welcome experienced bicycle safety instructors into their classrooms to learn the fundamentals of bicycle safety. The lessons are based on the National Safe Routes to School curriculum covering helmet safety, signaling, bike handling skills, visibility, and the rules of the road.
“Communities and public agencies around Lake Tahoe have invested millions of dollars into bike paths, trails, and safer routes for all, but education is just as important,” said Rory Lepore, assistant transportation planner at TRPA. “Teaching kids how to ride safely and confidently along Tahoe’s growing network of bike paths and shared-use trails helps more families choose biking and walking for everyday trips.”
Over the month, instructors connected with hundreds of Lake Tahoe Unified School District fourth graders through classroom education and Bike to School events, just in time for Tahoe Bike Month which runs through June. According to students, one of the most memorable demonstrations was the watermelon drop, where educators dropped a watermelon, once with and once without being fitted with a helmet, to show the real-life importance of head protection.
The month of youth-focused activities culminated with Bike and Walk to School Week May 26–29, with 466 students participating throughout the week.
“I love bringing this Safe Routes to School curriculum into my classroom because it increases walking and biking rates while reducing traffic congestion around schools,” said Tahoe Valley Elementary School Physical Education teacher Tasha Thomas.
The Lake Tahoe Unified School District also launched a bicycle registration program this spring that complements classroom education. The registration program is helping students and families better understand e-bike classifications, safety expectations, and responsible riding.
The Safe Routes to School pilot also incorporated the popular bike rodeos. This year, TRPA and the California Highway Patrol have held four bike rodeos with more than 800 Lake Tahoe Unified School District students. The rodeos teach students how to inspect bikes, maintain safe tire inflation, and practice bike handling skills through obstacle courses.
To launch the Safe Routes to School pilot program, TRPA and Tahoe Bicycle Coalition partnered with consultants Victoria Ortiz ofTailwind Strategies and Theresa Papandrea of Tahoe Alliance for Safe Kids to lead classroom education, stakeholder engagement, and community outreach efforts–something the partners would like to see continue.
“A key goal of this pilot is to build a shared, basin-wide vision for Safe Routes to School that will bring the support needed for theLake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition to make this a full-time program,” said Nick Speal, president of the coalition. “We also see opportunities to expand bike valets at events, ‘bike kitchen’ events for free tuneups and bike repair and maintenance tips, and other programs that make biking safer and more accessible for everyone.”
Victoria Ortiz with Tailwind Strategies gets ready to do the watermelon drop exercise at Bijou Elementary School in which she drops a watermelon, once with and once without being fitted with a helmet, to show the real-life importance of head protection. Photo by Theresa Papandrea
Theresa Papandrea from Tahoe Alliance for Safe Kids demonstrates the ABCs of biking to fourth grade students at Meyers Elementary School. Photo by Victoria Ortiz
TRPA Long Range Associate Planner Michelle Brown teaches bike handling skills at a bike rodeo at South Tahoe Middle School. Provided / TRPA
PLACERVILLE, Calif. – According to the 2025-2026 Grand Jury, “Continuity and Response Compliance” Case #26-07, the County of El Dorado committed to hire a qualified Chief Information Officer (CIO) with county-wide IT authority based on recommendations included in the 2024-2025 Grand Jury Report, Case # 25-05. The Board of Supervisors pledged to hire one by January 2026. The 2025-2026 Grand Jury noted that the Board’s response was facially compliant but substantively inadequate.
Each Civil Grand Jury reviews responses to recent investigations and recommended actions based on findings of facts derived from the evidence and findings contained in published reports. While responses and follow-throughs were generally excellent throughout the County, some noteworthy exceptions required mentioning, according to the report. The Grand Jury may investigate city governments, agencies, schools, and special districts within the county.
This Grand Jury concluded that to continue to act in the best interests of the citizenry of El Dorado County, it is essential to ensure that promises made are kept. The report, “Continuity and Response Compliance” Case #26-07 was published at https://www.eldoradocounty.ca.gov/Public-Safety-Justice/Safety-Justice/Grand-Jury/Reports-and-Responses/2025-2026 by the Superior Court, which annually appoints 19 county residents as grand jurors to serve as citizen watchdogs over local government.
If the current investigating jury deems responses insufficient, another investigation may be warranted by the succeeding Grand Jury.
All report findings and responses can be found in the full report on the County website. The Superior Court lists information about Grand Jury service and encourages citizen involvement. Anyone may ask the Grand Jury to investigate any issue within its jurisdiction. Visit https://www.eldoradocounty.ca.gov/Public-Safety-Justice/Safety-Justice/Grand-Jury
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – On Monday morning, the Lake Tahoe Unified School District (LTUSD) gathered at Tahoe Valley Elementary for a groundbreaking of its campus modernization effort. The project, funded through Measure U, is anticipated to finish in summer of 2027 and is just one of the several projects that will see classroom updates and infrastructure improvements in the district.
Measure U, which passed with a 61% approval in the 2024 election, authorized the district to release $127 million in bonds to fund classroom updates, asbestos removal and safety improvements. The measure also came with an increased property tax levy to help fund these projects.
Tahoe Valley Elementary will be having some substantial changes, including the construction of a new classroom to replaced the portable classrooms that they are demolishing. The project is also improving the parking and drop-off corridors for traffic flow. According to Studio W Architects, the construction cost is roughly $17.5 million. The modernization will improve all classrooms, multi-purpose and administrative spaces.
Studio W Architects CEO Brian Whitmore said, “Overall, the improvements are meant to strengthen the educational environments while promoting comprehensive safety and security campus-wide for years to come.”
LTUSD chief financial officer Kelly Buttery said, “This will drastically change the look of Tahoe Valley.” The project will also involve the creation of a new covered area and welcoming hub for students and guardians, new playgrounds and updated hard courts.
The board of trustees were excited for the project’s progress, which has moved fairly swiftly since the approval of Measure U.
Public information officer Teresa Schow said that the district began reaching out as soon as the measure was approved, as moving quickly can ensure securing of the best contacts. “Getting this far this quickly is impressive,” Schow said.
The projects at the middle school have also begun, and starting these projects while school is still in session is a part of their strategy to get the construction done by the projected date of next year’s summer.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – During the Tuesday evening city council meeting, Mayor Cody Bass handed out more keys to the city, this time to former President of Lake Tahoe Community College (LTCC) Jeff DeFranco and founder Roberta Mason.
Bass said that he was honored to present the keys to the two of them. “Both of them have been such leaders in our community and brought higher education.” As he presented the key to Mason, he said she had done “so much work for this community for decades, on decades, on decades.”
Mason acknowledged the other founders of the community college. “We are very lucky to have it here in our community. Nothing in Tahoe is easy, everything takes time,” she said. Mason also gave her blessing for the public safety training complex, which was a process that took several years.
In honoring DeFranco, Bass said he had done so much for the town and the college. “It’s sad to see you go, but happy for your future.”
DeFranco thanked the city council for the “extreme honor” and the 14 years he’d served the college. “It’s rare to promote and stay in your community.” DeFranco recently stepped down from the presidency position to take a position at Arizona State University, which he announced in March.
However, DeFranco said that he would still be living in the south shore and intended to still give back where he could. “This key doesn’t have to be an end… just halftime, if we will.”
DeFranco also referenced his grandfather, who served as mayor of Metro, Ohio, who told him that one of the best uses of his time was to serve the community. DeFranco showed the key to the city that his grandfather gave him, saying that this moment was full circle.
STATELINE, Nev. – Tahoe Transportation District (TTD) announces the return of the East Shore Express Service for the 2026 summer season, operating daily from Sunday, June 21 through Saturday, September 12. The service will follow the same successful route as 2025, with parking available at Tunnel Creek Parking Lot (1102 Tahoe Blvd.) and the Tahoe East Shore Trailhead.
The free transit line will run daily from 10 AM to approximately 6:30 PM, with continuous loop service connecting Incline Village to Sand Harbor State Park.
Eastbound Stops: Incline Village to Sand Harbor
Continuous loop service begins at 10:00 AM.
Route start: 76 Gas Station (corner of Northwood Blvd. & Tahoe Blvd./SR 28).
Sand Harbor is closed to incoming visitors after 3 PM. The last bus from Incline Village departs at 3 PM.
Westbound Stops: Sand Harbor to Incline Village
Continuous loop service begins at 10:30 AM.
Route start: Sand Harbor Visitor’s Center.
Sand Harbor is open from 8 AM to one hour past sunset. Starting at 3:30 PM, there are only westbound stops. The last bus from Sand Harbor leaves at 6 PM.
“The East Shore Express has become an essential part of how residents and visitors access Sand Harbor during the summer,” said Jim Marino, Executive Director of the Tahoe Transportation District. “The East Shore Express helps reduce traffic congestion, improve safety along the SR 28 corridor, and deliver transportation solutions that enhance the visitor experience while helping protect the natural environment that makes Tahoe so special.”
TTD encourages residents and visitors to utilize the East Shore Express and other transit options to help minimize congestion in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Riders can download the Transit App for real-time bus tracking and trip planning.
For schedules and additional information on TART services, visit TahoeTruckeeTransit.com. Riders can also download the TART Connect App for curb-to-curb rides and easy transfers to the mainline bus system on the North Shore.
Before planning a visit to Sand Harbor, TTD and Nevada State Parks advise making parking reservations at www.reservenevada.com or visiting the State Parks Facebook page for real-time capacity updates.
For more information about the Tahoe Transportation District and its ongoing projects, visit www.tahoetransportation.org.
STATELINE, Nev. — Kingsbury General Improvement District officials announced that a $1 million wastewater infrastructure improvement project serving the Stateline community has been included in Congressman Mark Amodei’s Fiscal Year 2027 Community Project Funding requests recently approved by the House Appropriations Committee.
The proposed project would modernize a portion of KGID’s wastewater collection system by redirecting flows from the aging Market Street Lift Station to the Douglas County Lake Tahoe Sewer Authority Beach Lift Station. The project would also eliminate aging infrastructure and remove an asbestos-cement force main located near Edgewood Creek.
While the federal appropriations process remains ongoing, inclusion in the House Appropriations Committee bill represents a significant milestone for the project.
“This project addresses critical wastewater infrastructure that serves the Stateline community and helps protect the environmental resources of the Lake Tahoe Basin,” said Derek Dornbrook, General Manager of KGID. “We appreciate Congressman Amodei’s support and his recognition of the infrastructure needs facing our district.”
Board Chair Ed Johns said the proposed funding would help reduce the financial burden on local ratepayers while allowing the District to advance needed infrastructure improvements.
“Securing outside funding is one of the most effective ways to address aging infrastructure while minimizing impacts on our customers,” Johns said. “We are grateful for Congressman Amodei’s efforts on behalf of our community.”
Congressman Amodei’s FY27 Community Project Funding requests include twenty projects throughout Nevada totaling more than $29 million. The KGID project was one of several Northern Nevada water and wastewater infrastructure projects selected for inclusion in the appropriations package.
Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto has also included the project in her FY27 Community Project Funding requests, reflecting broad bipartisan support and recognition of the importance of modernizing critical wastewater infrastructure serving the Lake Tahoe Basin.
LAKE TAHOE, Calif./Nev. – With so much to do, see, and experience in Tahoe, it’s no surprise that every year, over two million unique visitors spend an average of 15 million days in the region. This summer, Lake Tahoe Destination Stewardship Council partners are sharing what to “Know Before You Go” to have a high-quality experience in Tahoe, and a reminder that taking care of Tahoe is everyone’s responsibility.
“We’ve learned a lot over the past several years about how to better manage visitation to popular sites in our region,” said Nettie Pardue, Lake Tahoe Destination Stewardship Council managing director. “To that end, we’re continuing to add and expand services like the new Emerald Bay Shuttle that we invite everyone to use in an effort to recreate responsibly and continue to enhance the Tahoe experience for all.”
Getting Around
Use public transportation options. From free on-demand microtransit to new services like the daily shuttle service to Emerald Bay and free summer events Park & Ride in North Lake Tahoe and on the West Shore, it’s easy to sit back and let someone else do the driving while you take in the sights and leave the hassles of parking behind. Explore all transportation options at https://linkingtahoe.com/.
Enjoy nature under your own power. Tahoe’s extensive paved trail systems offer a great way for pedestrians and cyclists to get outside, get around, and enjoy nature. In addition, complimentary bike valet services are offered at many regional events to encourage bike travel.
Be aware of parking management programs being implemented to ease congestion on roadways and at popular recreation facilities, including day-use parking reservations at Sand Harbor. Paid parking fees at other recreation locations in Tahoe are contributing to the management of those areas for all to enjoy.
A number of infrastructure projects are underway throughout the Basin affecting area roadways, particularly midweek. To stay updated on area roadway projects and their impacts, visit TahoeRoads.com, CalTrans QuickMaps, and NDOT Travel Info.
Trails & Recreation
Find a new favorite spot. If the destination you’re trying to visit is full, find another place to explore. Visit TahoePublicBeaches.org for lake conditions and current operational and on-site offering updates at more than 40 public beaches. And, check trail conditions and status with Trailforks.
How to Help Take Care of Tahoe
Slowing down to get more out of your experience creates opportunities to help protect what makes Tahoe special. From maintaining lake clarity and Tahoe’s pristine beaches to caring for the forest and local wildlife, everyone plays an important role. This means:
Leaving places cleaner than you found them by disposing of trash, human and dog waste in proper receptacles, or taking it with you when receptacles are full or unavailable.
Bring a reusable water bottle to Drink Tahoe Tap and help reduce one of the top five types of litter found in Tahoe.
Adhering to fire bans and restrictions, and signing up for Tahoe Alerts to be alerted in the case of an emergency.
Helping to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species by taking time to clean, drain, and dry paddleboards and kayaks as well as anything else that could be wet, before entering Tahoe area lakes and streams.
Remember that bears and other wildlife live here, too. Find resources and tips for living, visiting and playing in Lake Tahoe bear country at tahoebears.org.
What to Expect if Celebrating America’s 250th in Tahoe
Alcohol restrictions will be in placeon the Truckee River, at Zephyr Cove and Shoals, Meeks Bay, Round Hill Pines, and at other select beaches over the holiday weekend.
Public safety and law enforcement presence will be increased over the July 4 weekend and throughout the summer.
“Collectively, the partners who make up our Council view destination stewardship as a management tool to create a positive experience for everyone,” continued Pardue. “We consider this an open invitation for everyone who loves Tahoe to help manage the impact we each make as individuals on the Tahoe environment.”
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Effective Monday, June 15, 2026, fire restrictions are in place for the City of South Lake Tahoe until further notice. No charcoal or wood fires are permitted during this time. The use of natural gas (NG), propane (LPG), or pellet BBQ grills, smokers, and firepits are permissible unless a red flag warning is issued.
“We ask that residents and visitors follow these fire restrictions to help minimize the potential of fire starts,” said Fire Chief Jim Drennan. “With the increase in dry fuels and high temperatures, there is a significant risk for fire danger, and this is one way to prevent wildfires.”
As a reminder, during a red flag warning or critical fire weather conditions, open flames are not allowed which includes natural gas, propane, and pellet BBQ grills, smokers, and firepits. Additionally, open flame devices such as tiki torches and fireworks, including sparklers and firecrackers, are prohibited in South Lake Tahoe year-round. If you witness the illegal use of fireworks or campfires, please call 911.
To learn more about fire prevention and creating defensible space, visit
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Valhalla Tahoe invites the community to enjoy a week of entertainment featuring improv comedy and live music as part of the 2026 Valhalla Festival of Arts.
The week begins on Tuesday, June 16 at 7 p.m. with the return of the Tahoe Improv Players to the Boathouse Theatre. Inspired by the fast-paced, audience-driven style of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the Tahoe Improv Players create an entirely unscripted evening of comedy based on audience suggestions. Every performance is unique, making each show a one-of-a-kind experience filled with unexpected laughs and spontaneous fun.
The celebration continues on Sunday, June 21 from 4:30–6:30 p.m. with the opening concert of Valhalla’s Free Lawn Concert Series featuring Lindsay & the Cheeks. Known for their high-energy blend of funk, soul, and feel-good grooves, the band delivers an infectious sound perfect for dancing, relaxing, and enjoying a summer evening by the lake.
This Father’s Day concert offers a festive way to celebrate Dad while enjoying live music in one of Lake Tahoe’s most scenic settings. Gates open at 3 p.m., allowing guests plenty of time to settle in on the Grand Lawn before the music begins.
The free, family-friendly event will feature food vendors, a beer and wine garden, Valhalla merchandise, a tie-dye station, lawn activities, and more. Attendees are encouraged to bring picnic blankets, low-back chairs, family, and friends.
“Summer at Valhalla is all about bringing people together through arts, culture, and community,” said Meg Peart, Executive Director of Valhalla Tahoe. “Whether you’re laughing along with the Tahoe Improv Players or dancing on the lawn with Lindsay & the Cheeks, these events showcase the welcoming spirit and vibrant energy that make Valhalla such a special place.”
Tickets for Tahoe Improv Players are available at ValhallaTahoe.com/events. Admission to the Lawn Concert is free and open to the public.
Each June, we recognize Community Health Improvement Week. This is a time to thank the people and groups who work every day to care for our community.
At Barton, we are proud to serve our neighbors in Lake Tahoe. Every three years, we ask our community to share their biggest health concerns through a Community Health Needs Assessment. The results are then shared with local partners, helping guide a collaborative approach to improving our community’s health.
Year after year, the same three priorities rise to the top: mental health, substance use, and access to care. These challenges are complex, but through strong partnerships across our region, meaningful progress is being made.
Supporting Mental Health Together
Access to mental and behavioral health care can be difficult, but our community is working together to expand support and respond more effectively when people need help most.
One important resource is El Dorado County’s crisis services, which offer 24/7 access to trained staff. People can connect by phone or receive support in person. Crisis staff can respond to hospitals, like Barton, to assess individuals after they are medically cleared. They work with care teams and loved ones to decide the safest and most helpful next step. This can include referrals, crisis support, and ongoing care options.
Addressing Substance Use Through Teamwork
Substance use impacts many individuals and families across our community, and addressing it requires a coordinated, compassionate approach.
At Barton, we’ve expanded our Substance Use Navigator team, strengthening our ability to connect patients with immediate support and ongoing recovery services. These navigators work directly with patients, helping them access treatment, counseling, and community resources tailored to their needs.
In 2025, Barton was recognized for a second year in a row on California’s Opioid Care Honor Roll for Superior Performance. This honor reflects strong work in safe prescribing, identifying substance use disorders, and using proven care practices.
Improving Access to Care
Access to care is not just about having doctors — it’s also about being able to get there. That’s why organizations like Lake Link are so important. Their expanded microtransit
service helps residents travel around the community, including to and from medical appointments, work, and grocery stores. This makes it easier for people to get the care and help they need.
In fact, what started as a permitting requirement for the Tahoe Blue Events Center, Lake Link will expand to cover the entire City of South Lake Tahoe to Zephyr Cove and the top of Kingsbury Grade starting this summer.
Moving Forward Together
We are especially proud to collaborate with a wide network of organizations, agencies, and groups who share a commitment to improving health in Lake Tahoe. By working together, we can better support our community.
Chris Proctor is the Director of Community Benefit with Barton Health. To learn more about Barton Health’s Community Health Needs Assessments, visit BartonHealth.org.
Rendering of Tahoe Keys redevelopment projectProvided/City of South Lake Tahoe
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – On Thursday, June 11, the City of South Lake Tahoe Planning Commission met to discuss the redevelopment and modernization of the Tahoe Keys Marina.
Suntex Marinas has owned the Tahoe Keys Marina since 2021, and from the start of their ownership has highlighted plans to revitalize the marina and update aging infrastructure.
“I hope I have aged better than the Tahoe Keys Marina,” said Lew Feldman, land use council on behalf of Suntex Marinas. “As we look at it today, I think we might conclude that it has not weathered well.”
The project requires the approval of a design review permit, a special use permit and the granting of variance for a setback encroachment by the Planning Commission while they determine if the project poses no significant effect on the environment.
The project includes a landscaping plan, driveways, pedestrian circulation, snow storage and ensuring the project isn’t visible from TRPA designated public recreation areas. It also includes a parking plan which proposes a reconfiguration of the current parking lot.
The proposal shows 251 total parking spaces, however this number falls 40 spaces short of the recommended spaces needed to fulfill demand, as analyzed in a parking analysis prepared by LSC Transportation Consultants, Inc., titled Technical Memorandum.
After Feldman’s presentation, commissioner Doug Williams raised concerns about parking. During public comment, Cindy Trego echoed Willaims’s concerns in regards to parking, saying the redevelopment would cause overflow into residential areas and asked to consider what the impacts would look like to residents.
“I’m not saying that the project isn’t beautiful,” said Trego. “But I think there should be a strong consideration for this parking issue to be resolved.”
Other major modifications in the proposal included the demolition of three existing marina buildings and the addition of seven new buildings with four being commercial and retail spaces, and three buildings that include a boat showroom, water tank, 52,600- square-foot boat storage facility, and a trash facility/public restroom.
Rendering of the promenade and plaza conceptProvided/City of South Lake Tahoe
Hitchcock noted several environmental impacts identified in his staff report pertaining to wildlife, hazardous materials and noise.
Proposed mitigation measures for wildlife include identifying active bird nests, a preconstruction survey for special-status plants and wildlife, environmental awareness training conducted by a qualified biologist, and implementing decontamination protocols outlined in the TRPA Aquatic Invasive Species Management Program.
Mitigation measures for hazardous materials required a qualified environmental professional to assess possible impact, and to ensure all hazardous materials be handled and disposed of in accordance with Lahontan RWQCB and the Department of Toxic Substances Control protocols.
Noise mitigations require implementation of noise-avoidance protocols during construction activities.
“The project, as proposed, will expand impacts in year-round uses, and enable contamination of Lake Tahoe with microplastics that are toxic without any response from the city addressing the toxic effects of the project in its entirety,” said Alan Miller, former water resource control engineer for the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, during public comment.
Jesse Patterson, Chief Strategy Officer at Keep Tahoe Blue, spoke during public comment expressing support of the previous project carried out by Suntex to replace the docks at the marina, and noted that this project would implement increased aquatic invasive species management, non-motorized access, community gathering locations, and EV boat charging which helps reduce pollution from boating while the organization continues to act as a watchdog to ensure environmentally-driven enforcements are fulfilled.
Scott Birkey, partner at the law firm Cox, Castle & Nicholson, spoke on behalf of the Tahoe Keys Property Owners Association (TKPOA) saying that TKPOA is currently in contract with Suntex to acquire a portion of the property that is included in the project area. Birkey said this information was omitted from the staff report and IS/MND.
“It’s just not clear what Suntex believes may happen on that portion of the property,” said Birkey. “My understanding is that Suntex has not reached out to TKPOA or the city to discuss any of this, despite the fact that both Suntex and TKPOA are parties in an agreement that bear directly on the scope of the marina’s development.”
Discussions about the property will likely continue between TKPOA and Suntex.
After deliberation from commissioners, aside from Gavin Feiger who recused himself from the item, a motion for the project was approved with the addition of more parking spaces.
The project will be discussed at the upcoming TRPA Governing Board meeting on June 24.
Dr. David Eric Condon (68 years) died Friday April 3, 2026, in the comfort of his home and with the love and care of his cousin, Jeff Peterson. He graduated from the University of California, Davis, then attended California School of Podiatric Medicine in San Francisco where he earned a Doctor of Podiatric Medicine (DPM) degree. After an early career at El Camino Hospital in the Bay Area, Dave established a Podiatry practice in Truckee, California. For 32 years he successfully led that practice, serving thousands of patients in the greater Tahoe Basin. He also opened a second office in Incline Village. Dave considered his medical practice to be his greatest accomplishment in life. It brought him great sorrow that, as he prepared to retire, no successor could be found to continue the work he was so proud of.
Dave was a lover of the outdoors and of animals. He was happiest carving turns on the mountains and camping, hiking, and biking his way up and down the Sierras, often with his trusty golden doodle companion, Hobie. Hobie was also Dave’s medical office mascot for more than a decade, loved by many. Dave was an avid supporter of the Humane Society of Truckee Tahoe; they noted that he was “always in their corner.” One of Dave’s other passions was the game of tennis, which started as a youth playing with his parents. As an adult, Dave found great joy in playing in The United States Tennis Association Leagues, often representing his home club, Tahoe Donner. He valued the camaraderie, going from battling fiercely on court to having an IPA and great laughs with his teammates and opponents after the matches. Dave also captained the team, curating lineups and motivating the team with his competitive enthusiasm. He led his team to win the Reno/Tahoe league four of the six years he captained.
With over 20 years of playing in the league, Dave’s tennis prowess, generosity with medical care, dedication to the team, and most importantly, friendship, will always be remembered by all who played by his side and across the net. When it was time to take a break and get away, The Big Island was the place for Dave. He spent many happy vacations there during his lifetime, sampling microbrews and swimming with local fish, turtles, and dolphins. Dave is survived by his cousins Jeff Peterson, Rachael Peterson, Matthew Peterson, and Kenneth Arnopole. He was preceded in death by his parents, Bob Condon and Sylvia Condon. Dave was a wonderful son, husband, cousin, and friend. He will be missed by many. One of the last things Dave texted to his former wife and close friend, Marie Borges, was: “Time is the most valuable commodity. Live life large. I know you will!” Dave elected to go quietly and without fanfare. He may be remembered with a donation to The Humane Society of Truckee Tahoe. https://hstt.org/
UPDATE as of June 16 at 2 p.m. – The identity of the June 13 drowning victim has been released by the Washoe County Medical Examiner’s office. Jayden E. Robinson, 25, of Highland, Calif., died near Hidden Beach at Lake Tahoe. His cause of death was drowning. It was determined to be an accident.
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. -At approximately 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 13, personnel from the North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District responded to reports of a water rescue involving a possible drowning on the north shore of Lake Tahoe in Incline Village, Nevada.
Emergency responders arrived on scene and successfully recovered the victim from the water. Firefighters, paramedics, and allied emergency personnel immediately initiated advanced life support and resuscitation efforts.
Despite extensive lifesaving measures, the victim could not be revived and was pronounced deceased at the scene.
The identity of the victim is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. The circumstances surrounding the incident remain under investigation by the appropriate law enforcement and investigative agencies.
The North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District extends its sincere condolences to the victim’s family, friends, and loved ones during this difficult time.
The sun is setting on Sunnyside Restaurant & Lodge as the community has known it for almost four decades. The longtime operator of the restaurant, T S Restaurants, is stepping aside in the fall to make way for a new operator — chef and restaurateur Mark Estee of Local Food Group.
T S Restaurants, which currently operates 13 destination restaurants in Hawaii and California, has run both the Sunnyside restaurant and hotel since 1987. T S CEO Jackie Reed said the decision was a mutual one made with the property owner, Tahoe Sunnyside Partners.
“It was a very difficult decision, but it felt time to return Sunnyside to a more local operator,” she said, “to do what was best for Sunnyside for the future.”
Estee has opened numerous restaurants in Tahoe and Reno, including Burger Me! and Moody’s Bistro Bar & Beats (though he is no longer involved with either). Before that, he served as the executive chef at Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe’s Lone Eagle Grille. His group currently owns four restaurants in Reno — seven if you count Great Basin Brewery’s four locations.
Although Reed noted it’s been a difficult few years for the restaurant industry, she said the decision to part ways with Sunnyside was not a financial one. Mike Dumke, managing partner of Tahoe Sunnyside Partners, said the same thing.
“It’s been a great relationship with T S for 39 years, almost more like a partnership than a landlord relationship,” he said. “We both mutually came to the conclusion that it may be better to have them transition out and have a more local operator get involved in the property.”
Dumke said Estee plans on putting a fresh spin on the menu but will retain the theme of American fare as well as seafood and great burgers and adding some smoked items.
The new partnership also marks the beginning of significant investments across the property. Sunnyside will shut down Oct. 5 for renovations with plans to re-open April 1, 2027. The Local Food Group will remodel the restaurant, which includes an expansion of the kitchen and private dining spaces, while the ownership group plans on refreshing the 23 hotel rooms with new paint, carpet, and furniture, but no new construction. Tahoe Sunnyside Partners, which also owns Sunnyside Watersports & Marina, will manage the lodge going forward.
T S’s presence in Tahoe City began in 1978 with Jake’s on the Lake, then Sunnyside nine years later. Jake’s sold to a T S founder’s brother, Chris Thibaut, in 2005. Despite T S leaving Tahoe in the fall, Sunnyside will retain its storied name.
“It’s an emotional and bittersweet time for us,” said Reed, who noted T S is focusing on the Summer Send-Off celebration, with plans still in the works. “Not a lot of restaurants can say they operated for 39 years.”
The latest environmental controversy in Tahoe isn’t a development project, a wildfire, or a fight over lake clarity.
It’s a weed killer.
A proposal to use glyphosate in portions of the Caldor Fire burn scar has triggered mounting concern among residents and environmental advocates, opening a broader conversation about the herbicide’s health risks, ecological impacts, and growing presence throughout the region.
It all started with nonprofit news outlet Mother Jones’ yearlong investigation into the expanding use of herbicides in California forests. Released in May, the article dove deep into the worlds of wildfire management and recovery, industrial pesticide production, and complex federal bureaucracy. Among other projects, the article highlighted Forest Service plans to use herbicide as a vegetation management tool in the burn scar of the 2021 Caldor wildfire.
PULSING INTO WATERSHEDS: The most widely used herbicide in the world, glyphosate, poses a great risk of ecological devastation, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. Illustration by Sarah Miller/Moonshine Ink
The final environmental assessment and decision notice for the Caldor Fire Restoration Project — to be spearheaded by the Forest Service’s Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) — was released in March of this year. The project will thin tree stands in and around the burn area, remove damaged trees, and reforest burned areas, all within an approximately 11,700-acre project footprint.
Part of that preparation and reforestation is slated to include potential herbicide treatment. In the environmental assessment, LTBMU notes that “herbicides may be used to aid site preparation before tree planting and to manage competing vegetation after planting when manual treatments are ineffective or expected to be insufficient.”
At the top of the list of intended herbicides? Glyphosate.
Public reaction to the Caldor Restoration Project
The Mother Jones investigation analyzed more than 5 million California pesticide-use records, finding that approximately 266,000 pounds of glyphosate were applied in California forests in 2023 — nearly five times the amount used two decades earlier. The article characterized forest applications as the fastest-growing use of glyphosate in the state.
Public opposition to the use of the chemical in and around the Lake Tahoe Basin has quickly mounted, and pressure is on for local agencies.
In response to public outcry around the use of glyphosate in the Caldor Fire Restoration Project, a change.org petition began to circulate. It quickly garnered well over 22,000 signatures by the time this article was written, with public comments and support pouring in from across the country. Conspicuously absent from the body of this petition, however, are any concrete demands to address the titular demand, “Stop glyphosate spraying in the Tahoe Basin.”
This missing piece may be a reflection of the confusing decision-making associated with this project — in this particular instance, it seems few people know exactly how to effect change within our local bureaucracy.
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REFORESTATION: A recently planted Jeffrey pine seedling grows at the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort in California during a project in the Caldor Fire burn scar in May. Personnel from Silhouette Forestry, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Great Basin Institute planted red fir, Jeffrey pine and western white pine. Photo by Andrew Avitt/U.S. Forest Service
REVEGETATION WITH A PURPOSE: While vegetation will naturally reappear in the burn scar, the Forest Service plans to use mechanical and chemical treatments to ensure sufficient conifer growth. Photo by Sarah Miller/Moonshine Ink
PULSING INTO WATERSHEDS: The most widely used herbicide in the world, glyphosate, poses a great risk of ecological devastation, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. Illustration by Sarah Miller/Moonshine Ink
Frustrated, concerned, and confused, the public has swarmed to social media and rallied at Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) governance meetings to demand regulatory change. But that’s just not how it works, Jeff Cowen, public information officer at TRPA explained to me. At least, not anymore.
To understand the decision-making process behind environmental projects like this one, one must go back to the start. In 1969, TRPA was formed to help manage the two states, five counties, and three national forests that all wanted decision-making power over Lake Tahoe. Soon after, LTBMU was formed to consolidate national forest management in the region.
“It’s … been a partnership from the start,” Cowen said of the relationship between TRPA and LTBMU. But with 79% of land in the Basin owned and managed by the Forest Service, there are limitations on TRPA’s influence.
Those limitations have shifted over time, perhaps the most notable of which came as a result of the 2007 Angora wildfire. Inefficiencies, silos, and redundant regulatory procedures, Cowen explained, were identified as sticking points in the fire’s cause and magnitude. To address these hindrances, about 20 agencies came together to streamline environmental decision-making in the Basin.
Among the outcomes of this streamlining was an expanded memorandum of understanding between TRPA and LTBMU. For major projects like the Caldor Fire Restoration Project, TRPA is no longer a permitting authority, but instead an advisor to the decision-making process.
Cowen emphasized the efficacy of this decision, sharing that he feels that a “regulatory framework is really ineffective and not needed,” between the two agencies. “Because the Forest Service has very similar goals … they basically get to the point where they’re just adopting [our] goals and implementing them through their own plans.”
Together, the agencies have treated 80,000 acres across the Basin for wildfire prevention in the past two decades. But he also acknowledged there are “big, federal, overarching principles and direction that they also have to follow.”
As of late, these overarching principles seem somewhat murky.
How we got here: A noxious government love affair
In February of this year, the Trump administration made a sweeping move with the issuance of an Executive Order unambiguously named “Promoting the National Defense by Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorous and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides.”
This explicit prioritization of glyphosate production and use by the executive branch is a conveniently-timed declaration of support for the lawsuit-ridden Bayer company — and it’s no mystery as to why, Nathan Donley from the Center for Biological Diversity explained.
Our government has and continues to validate the use of glyphosate and other pesticides — despite the widely documented risks — because of the immense lobbying power of agricultural and agrochemical industries, Donley said. And it is far from isolated to the Trump administration.
“It’s been an absolute full court press from Bayer on all levels of government,” he explained. “Not just the executive and legislative branches. I mean, Clarence Thomas was a former Monsanto employee.”
And he’s not the only agrichemical-employee-turned-political-appointee. As of President Trump’s first year in office, all four of the top positions in the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention — the Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator, Assistant Administrator, Deputy Assistant Administrator for New Chemicals, and Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticides — have been filled by former executives or lobbyists of chemical and agricultural companies. The EPA and most other pesticide regulatory agencies continue to assert that glyphosate does not pose a health risk when used according to its label.
As Donley said, “the tendrils run deep … in the levels of influence that this company, Bayer, has in our government.”
Just how deep they run on initiatives like the Caldor Fire Restoration Project remains somewhat opaque. In the project’s environmental assessment, the herbicide use is identified as a way to expedite reforestation and “achieve silvicultural objectives.” These objectives? Conifer stands.
The assessment names three target species that, if not for herbicide use, could otherwise outcompete reforested conifers: western whitethorn, greenleaf manzanita, and ceanothus, or California lilac.
These native, fire-adapted species are known as pioneer species, meaning they are often the first to appear after wildfire events. Their fast-growing roots help to stabilize fire-impacted soil and prevent excess erosion, while also providing species-specific benefits like returning nutrients to damaged soils and quickly regenerating important habitat for pollinators and other species.
But while targeted elimination of native species may raise eyebrows, the Forest Service has an explanation. They are “not taking a wholesale targeting approach to these shrub species,” but instead targeting them only in the immediate vicinity of conifer seedlings. This will help ensure the area includes enough established trees to prevent full conversion to a montane chaparral environment, which could otherwise ignite easier and burn faster in future fire seasons.
Still, there is time before glyphosate use is slated to begin in the Basin.
“No herbicide application is planned for 2026 or 2027,” the Forest Service’s Region 5 media team stated. “Reforestation is an activity that will occur after initial entry (such as mechanical or hand treatments to remove overhead hazards and perhaps prescribed burning or mastication as site preparation) and occurs later in the project implementation timeline.”
Of the 11,700 acres of Forest Service land included within the project area, herbicide treatment is only proposed on a portion of the 2,400 to 3,600 acres where reforestation efforts will take place.
It’s a common pesticide. What’s the big deal?
Well, ain’t that the $11 billion question.
Health and environmental concerns associated with glyphosate use and exposure have been bubbling up for over a decade.
And despite being the most widely used herbicide globally, glyphosate wasn’t originally poised to become a pesticide at all. The chemical was first developed as a boiler and pipe cleaner agent. It wasn’t until 1974 that Monsanto, an American agrochemical and biotechnology company, discovered its efficacy as a herbicide. Monsanto quickly patented the discovery and sold glyphosate as the active ingredient in its crown-jewel herbicide product — Roundup.
GREENS-KEEPING: Golf courses are among the many landscapes where glyphosate is commonly used for vegetation management. Photo by Sarah Miller/Moonshine Ink
For over 25 years, Roundup products filled shelves at hardware and home garden stores, farming co-ops, and major industrial retailers as the sole glyphosate-based product. Touting its unique success as a versatile weed-killer, products were marketed and sold in a variety of forms, from ready-to-use herbicides for home gardens to commercial-grade concentrates designed for agricultural, industrial, and heavy-duty landscaping use. The substance was applied with everything from handheld bottles to backpack devices to large-scale aerial sprayers.
In 2000, Monsanto’s patent for exclusive use of the chemical expired in the United States. Other manufacturers began to flood the market, introducing their own glyphosate-based herbicides. Public use skyrocketed and, for the better part of two decades, glyphosate products flew off shelves.
Then in 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), published a scientific evaluation of the carcinogenicity of several market herbicides, glyphosate among them. As a result, glyphosate was designated as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Months later, the first lawsuit to allege Monsanto’s Roundup products were causing cancer proceeded to trial in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, a groundskeeper for Benicia Unified School District argued Roundup had caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The case, Johnson v. Monsanto, became the first of approximately 125,000 similar claims filed by 2020, with the California court ultimately ruling in Mr. Johnson’s favor. The jury awarded the plaintiff $289 million in compensatory and punitive damages, an amount that was later reduced by the judge to $78 million and then $21 million.
At the same time, proponents of glyphosate products began to vehemently defend both its safety and usage.
One such advocate named Patrick Moore, a former environmentalist turned TED-talking-climate-change-skeptic, even went so far as to claim Roundup was safe to drink. Moore was featured on air in a CBC News segment on the 2015 WHO findings, where he stated that “you can drink a whole quart of [Roundup], it won’t hurt you.” However, when offered a glass of the chemical by his interviewer, Moore declined to substantiate his claim in real-time, repeatedly saying “No, I’m not stupid.”
In 2017, a multi-district litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California consolidated the surge of federal lawsuits against Monsanto for its Roundup products. The litigation revealed a body of evidence that the leading study cited to defend Roundup’s safety for human exposure — Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, published in 2000 by Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology — was in large part shaped and steered by Monsanto employees. The suit exposed email exchanges between Monsanto employees offering congratulations to one another for their “hard work” on the study and hopes that it would become “the reference on Roundup and glyphosate safety.”
Ultimately, the journal retracted the study, citing significant ethical concerns. But the damage was done, and the study still ranks among the top references justifying glyphosate use and claims to its safety.
In 2018, Monsanto was acquired by Bayer, a German pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical company. Bayer continued to sell Roundup but quickly discontinued the use of the Monsanto brand name, which was becoming increasingly tied to unfavorable litigation.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California found Monsanto liable for another case of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in Hardeman v. Monsanto Co. in 2019, initially awarding Mr. Hardeman $80 million in damages — a total subsequently reduced to $20 million. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the decision in 2021, finding that the EPA’s approval of a pesticide label does not immunize a manufacturer from being held liable. This case ultimately became the first (and at this point, only) federal decision on the issue.
Despite Bayer phasing out glyphosate as an active ingredient in its residential Roundup products in 2023, it remains present in commercial and agricultural formulas. Lawsuits have continued to arise, with substantial damages and fees awarded to plaintiffs whose exposure to Roundup resulted in non-Hodgkin, follicular, T-cell, or other forms of lymphoma.
As of the time this article is being written, Bayer has paid over $11 billion in settlements for Roundup-related lawsuits and proposed a nation-wide class action settlement that would cap current and future claim payouts at $7.25 billion, to be used for declining payments for up to 21 years. The class action is heavily opposed by plaintiffs and environmental and public health organizations who have described it as a liability “shield.” A decision from the federal Supreme Court on its constitutionality is expected later in June. If approved, it will become one of the largest legal fee awards to date.
SUBSTANTIAL DAMAGE: The 2021 Caldor Fire burned 221,835 acres across El Dorado, Alpine, and Amador counties. Photo by Sarah Miller/Moonshine Ink
Public health and environmental impact
Cancer is far from the only public health risk posed by glyphosate use and exposure.
Studies have found potential ties between glyphosate exposure and various medical conditions such as liver disease and reproductive disorders including PCOS, endometriosis, and disruptions to fertility. What’s more, a growing body of research is finding that glyphosate exposure may be a trigger for various gastrointestinal diseases and conditions, including celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
But despite these alarming associations, it remains unclear how much exposure is required to pose a real health risk to humans. In the vast majority of legal cases, affected plaintiffs are groundkeepers, farmers, or dedicated recreational gardeners — folks routinely subjected to highly concentrated forms of glyphosate.
In all likelihood, the exposure any individual may experience as a direct result of a relatively remote use such as the Caldor Fire Restoration Project would not cause substantial human harm. According to the National Pesticide Information Center, the half-life (time needed for a chemical to reduce to half of its initial amount) of glyphosate is particularly variable, landing somewhere between 2 and 197 days in soil, and between “a few days” and 91 days in water.
The chance of human exposure narrows further upon consideration of where the Caldor Fire Reforestation Project’s proposed herbicide treatment areas lie. In an email, the Forest Service’s Region 5 media team noted that “for the Caldor Fire Restoration Project, herbicide use is proposed only on a subset of the area proposed for reforestation, where other reforestation site preparation methods will not work. For example, manual removal equipment is not permitted in project areas with steep slopes, locations far from existing roads, [or] sensitive soils.”
But the questionable human health impacts of this project are not the sole consideration in this instance. An even greater risk is the ecological devastation that glyphosate wreaks on habitats, plants, and wildlife.
Donley at the Center for Biological Diversity noted that so long as glyphosate is present, it poses an environmental risk. This is particularly true after any precipitation, where stormwater runoff “goes into the nearby river, lake, or stream of that watershed and contaminates it with high pulses of pesticide.”
Donley emphasized that most animals do rely on these waters, whether they are woodland animals seeking drinking water, wetland species like migratory birds, or aquatic animals that then have no choice but to suffer through 24/7 exposure to contaminated water. While this can be lethal, he added, there are other effects as well. “It can lead to chronic harms like reduced reproductive capability or developmental defects, so it can affect subsequent generations and ultimately lead to population decline or even collapse for certain species,” he explained.
The Environmental Protection Agency found that glyphosate use was likely causing harm to 1,676 of the approximately 1,700 plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Where the Caldor Fire Restoration Project is concerned, LTBMU will be taking some precautions to prevent this catastrophic runoff. “Herbicide applications will not take place within six hours of predicted rainfall that has a high probability of producing measurable runoff, or as requested by the Forest Service aquatics biologist,” the Forest Service shared via email. Additionally, the project will use backpack sprayers or other low-volume methods, as opposed to aquatic or aerial application, which produces greater concern for pollinator species.
But slip-ups or insufficient margins of time between application and precipitation could be catastrophic for some species that call the Tahoe area home.
In 2021, the federal Environmental Protection Agency found that glyphosate use was likely causing harm to 1,676 of the approximately 1,700 plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. Impacted species include the Sierra Nevada red fox, California spotted owl, and Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, all of which are listed in the federal Endangered Species Act and live in our area.
Hitting close to home
While proposed glyphosate use in the Caldor burn scar has created quite a stir for the public, it appears as though our community remains blissfully unaware that glyphosate made its debut in the Truckee/Tahoe area long ago.
According to its most recent annual data, California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) ranked glyphosate the sixth most used pesticide in the state in 2023. Of herbicides (plant-specific pesticides) used statewide, glyphosate ranked number one both by pounds applied and total acres treated – 10.7 million and 4.8 million, respectively. About 270,000 pounds alone were used to spray California’s forest land, a figure that has been steadily increasing each year.
Agriculture remains a top use, with glyphosate the pesticide of choice for a variety of crops, from cotton to nuts to citrus and even — put down your glass of pinot here — wine grapes. Neighborhood gardens also pose a risk; DPR data excludes residential use, but despite Bayer’s 2023 phaseout of glyphosate from its residential products, the compound remains the active ingredient in competitor products. Nationwide, the EPA estimates residential and non-crop glyphosate use at several million pounds per year.
While glyphosate is most closely associated with agriculture, it is also widely used in non-agricultural settings, including rights-of-way corridors, landscape maintenance, parks, athletic facilities, golf courses, utility infrastructure, and other managed public spaces.
Individual county reporting provides insight into current uses regionally. El Dorado County, which encompasses the Eastern side of Folsom to the California-Nevada state line in South Lake Tahoe, applied over 9,500 pounds of glyphosate in 2023 for forest and timberland applications, and just over 6,000 along rights of way areas like roads, highway corridors, sidewalks, and curb areas. Placer County, on the other hand, reported over 9,000 pounds used for rights of way areas, just over 4,600 pounds for forest and timberland areas, and just under 4,000 pounds for landscape maintenance. Nevada County clocked in with significantly lower rates, atjust over 2,000 pounds used for rights of way areas and a similar amount for landscape maintenance topping the list in 2023.
These numbers encompass more than public agency use. Private landowners are also obligated to report use to DPR, and glyphosate has become industry-standard for a number of vegetative fixtures. For example, on its website, NV Energy notes herbicide use as a mechanism for vegetation management under its power lines.
A recent follow-up article from Mother Jones opened with investigative journalist Nate Halverson standing in the middle of a run at Sierra-at-Tahoe that “clearly had been doused in glyphosate,” pointing to the area being “devoid of spring flowers; the bushes leafless, brittle, and dead by all appearances.” Sure enough, Halverson had found that the “Forest Service posted maps online showing it had sprayed glyphosate around and within Sierra-at-Tahoe in spring 2025.” This spraying was a part of a separate Caldor Fire Restoration Project, managed by El Dorado Resource Conservation District and taking place outside of the Basin, with a much larger footprint approved for herbicide use.
Patrick Lacey, public relations manager at Palisades Tahoe, said the resort does not use any chemicals, herbicides, or pesticides for vegetation management. Instead, he explained, its vegetation management crews use the mechanical removal of smaller trees and bushes to focus on “reducing ladder fuels on the forest floor and skier safety; the combination works synergistically.”
Since 2015, more than 125,000 legal claims have been filed alleging that exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, contributed to the development of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Bayer has paid over $11 billion in settlements thus far. File photo
Marc McMullen, the golf course superintendent at Northstar California Resort, told me he does use glyphosate as well as fungicide to manage vegetation on the Northstar course. While total use during the season is relatively low, McMullen emphasized that the compound used is a harsh enough product that it is not available off the shelf and requires a pesticide applicator license through both the state and county.
University extension publications and turf-management literature routinely identify golf courses as a significant use category for the herbicide for vegetation management, cart-path edging, weed control, and renovation projects.
Moonshine Ink reached out to other land managers of community spaces, but many did not respond to the inquiries.
While debate continues over where and when glyphosate should be used, its presence in the modern landscape is difficult to avoid entirely. That reality raises a practical question for residents: What steps, if any, can individuals and communities take to reduce exposure?
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot
Options range from personal choices to participating in public discussions.
First and foremost, eating food grown using organic practices whenever possible is one of the leading ways to reduce glyphosate exposure and mitigate its harms to human health, researchers say.
A 2020 study published in Environmental Research found that diet is a main source of glyphosate exposure for humans. What’s more, researchers found glyphosate levels in children prior to making the switch to organic foods were approximately five times higher than adult levels. The good news? Transitioning to organic food had a near-immediate impact on the amount of glyphosate in subjects’ systems, reducing levels by over
70 percent.
Water, too, can be a potential source of glyphosate exposure. In the Basin, where most household drinking water comes from surface waters, regional water purveyors regularly test for pesticides. Sarah Vidra, the Executive Director at Tahoe Water Suppliers Association, confirmed that “pesticides are … monitored as part of the Synthetic Organic Chemicals (SOC) program.” Currently, she added, “the Association is not aware of any pesticide detections exceeding drinking water standards in Lake Tahoe source water supplies.” Vidra confirmed the SOC testing TWSA uses detects glyphosate.
Truckee tap water is substantially more removed from potential contamination, as the Truckee Donner Public Utility District (TDPUD) sources all water from deep underground aquifers. “The average age of our drinking water predates many modern chemicals,” Alex Spychalsky, TDPUD Communications Program Manager, explained via email. “For example, the rain we saw fall in our region last week won’t reach our aquifer for decades.”
But Donley said there’s more to be done than relying on water purveyors. “Regardless of how clean you think your water is, everyone should have a good water filter in their house,” he advised. “Because I don’t care how clean you think your water is, it’s not.”
MAKING THE ROUNDS: Glyphosate wasn’t originally poised to become a pesticide at all. The chemical was first developed as a boiler and pipe cleaner agent. In 1974 Monsanto discovered its efficacy as a herbicide and quickly patented the discovery and sold glyphosate as the active ingredient in its crown-jewel herbicide product — Roundup. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
While limiting glyphosate exposure in private spaces like kitchens, yards, and gardens can help mitigate risk, navigating more public areas that are outside of one’s control can be more complex. A simple rule of thumb, Donley suggested, is don’t play — and don’t let your loved ones play — where dandelions don’t grow. Weeds and other landscaping imperfections are natural. Allow them to be a sign of safe, glyphosate-free spaces.
Locally, questions about herbicide use may be addressed through existing regulatory and planning processes. As for the standards by which TRPA advises projects, those can be changed, though Cowen noted that “the path to what action [TRPA] can take is a relatively long one.” While it typically responds to emerging issues through scientific review, Cowen suggested the level of public interest surrounding glyphosate may warrant further examination. In the case of herbicide use in the Tahoe Basin, he said, “public concern is probably enough for us to start looking at it.”
Whether glyphosate is ultimately used as part of the LTBMU Caldor Fire Restoration Project remains to be seen. What is already clear is that the proposal has sparked a broader conversation about forest management, wildfire recovery, herbicide use, public health, and environmental stewardship — one that is likely to continue well beyond the boundaries of the burn scar itself.
For decades, Truckee Fire Protection District has provided fire and emergency medical services to some of the region’s most affluent neighborhoods. According to the district, however, it has never received the full share of property tax revenue that should be tied to those responsibilities.
Now, after years of unsuccessful negotiations, Truckee Fire has taken Placer County to court, arguing that a decades-old property tax allocation error has deprived the district of roughly $40 million since the mid-1970s. The lawsuit could reshape how millions of dollars in property taxes are distributed among local agencies, drawing 10 other districts into the dispute.
Property tax collection for select special districts across Truckee/North Tahoe play a significant role in revenue streams. Some, like Truckee Sanitary District and Tahoe Truckee Unified School District, rely on property taxes for more than 60% of their operating revenue.
This is common in California: Revenue from the 1% property tax is the foundation for most jurisdictions, from counties and cities down to schools and special districts.
Which means if there’s a piece of the highly precious property pie tax missing, it doesn’t go unnoticed.
Nearly 75% of the Truckee Fire Protection District’s 2025/26 revenue comes from taxes, or $14.1 million of its total $19.8 million budget. That number, alleges the district, should be $4 million more.
The district officially brought a case before the Sacramento Superior Court in February 2025 to right a “historic wrong,” according to court documentation.
Placer County, through outside counsel, has so far called into question the legal validity of the entire case, disputing each of the four causes of action submitted by Truckee Fire that make up its argument. Judge Jennifer K. Rockwell ruled against the county’s claims as recently as May 14.
As of press deadline, the ball is in Placer’s court: it has until July 6 to file a formal response to Truckee Fire’s demand for court action and a legal ruling.
Because of the active litigation, both entities provided brief statements to Moonshine Ink:
“Truckee Fire looks forward to having our day in court and to an expeditious, fair, and complete resolution to this matter,” Chief Kevin McKechnie said.
“The county disputes the claims brought by the district and will defend its position in the litigation,” shared Steven Wilson-Maggard, public information officer.
How did we get here?
The red tape that’s causing so much back and forth stems from California’s Proposition 13, passed back in 1978.
This ruling put a 1% tax rate cap of a property’s assessed value and limited yearly assessment increases to 2%. (Prior to ’78, the state’s average property tax rate was 2.67%.) Further, property reassessments bringing up a property to current market value can only take place when there’s a change in ownership or new construction.
Assembly Bill 8 (AB 8), enacted in 1979, determined how that 1% tax was divided up among local governments. County auditors were required to base this distribution on the average property tax revenue received by local governments in the few years preceding Prop 13.
The crux for Truckee Fire is that a few years prior to Prop 13, the district began providing fire protection and medical services to a piece of land known then as the Woolverton Property and known now as Zone 7, annexed into the district in 1974.
CAUGHT IN RED TAPE: Select neighborhoods in Martis Valley are classified as a No Pay Tax Rate Area (TRA), which means Truckee Fire Protection District provides service with no property tax revenue in return. The group of homes in question amounts to 1,600 structures across 2,189 parcels. Graphic by Lauren Shearer/Moonshine Ink and courtesy Google Maps
Zone 7 currently comprises Martis Camp, Schaffer’s Mill, part of Lahontan off Snowshoe Thompson Circle; a portion of Sierra Meadows off Pine Cone and Ponderosa drives, and Golden Pine Road; as well as a section of Ponderosa Palisades on Silver Fir Drive west of Thelin Drive.
The Woolverton agreement limited taxation to the value of improvements (or development), not the underlying land, and allowed property owner Bertha Joerger Woolverton “to continue to live on her property unburdened by taxes but to support the District’s services as she sold her land for development,” as stated in Truckee Fire’s complaint.
In board meetings, Placer County supervisors have called this deal of taxing Zone 7 at a reduced rate as a mistake made by Truckee Fire, leading to the district receiving only partial property tax from that area during three critical years before Prop 13. That taxation level was locked into place in 1978 — and has stayed that way through today.
During the 2024/25 tax year, across the TRAs in Zone 7, Truckee Fire received between 0.60% and 0.75% in AB 8 property tax allocation. A nearby TRA shows Truckee Fire receiving 11.58% of the distribution.
There have been some negotiations in the intervening years. Truckee Fire formally requested its share of AB 8 funding in 1997, 2011, 2018, and 2023. In 1997, Placer’s Auditor Controller Jayne Goulding sent a letter to Truckee Fire stating the revenues had been corrected, but that change never took place.
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IN 1973, Truckee Fire received a letter from Bertha Woolverton requesting annexation into the district for land known today as Martis Valley. Documents courtesy Truckee Fire Protection District
IN 1973, Truckee Fire received a letter from Bertha Woolverton requesting annexation into the district for land known today as Martis Valley. Documents courtesy Truckee Fire Protection District
In 2019, the county allocated the district funding from an adjacent bucket: Placer County executed a voluntary tax share agreement allowing Truckee Fire to receive a portion of fire control fee collected from Zone 7 property taxes, amounting to about $300,000 annually. Truckee Fire considers this agreement irrelevant to the larger situation, according to court documentation.
In June 2024, the Placer County Board of Supervisors heard a presentation about the fire control fund and whether to continue with a subsequent funding method or not.
Placer County Supervisor Jim Holmes pointed out in June 2024 that Truckee Fire could have corrected the issue in part during the county’s 2003 general plan update but did not do so: “This sets a precedent … This takes money out of our general fund to supplement a district that failed to take action when the opportunity was there for them.”
The item was not up for action, and ended with unclear steps for the future. Eight months later, Truckee Fire filed its case.
What specifically is being asked for?
Truckee Fire’s legal reasons for suing Placer fall into two camps: three focus on the failure of property tax allocation (as described previously), while the fourth focuses on the county’s failure to comply with the Placer County General Plan and Martis Valley Community Plan.
This second camp claims the county approved real estate developments such as Martis Valley, Schaffer’s Mill, and part of Lahontan neighborhoods in Zone 7 without funding fire service in conjunction.
In early 2024, Truckee Fire alleges in the complaint, the district stated on an early building permit for a townhome development in Schaffer’s Mill that as the serving fire protection district, it would “withhold approval of a Certificate of Occupancy until it received adequate funding to provide fire services to the development.” The district also requested that the county restrict further development in Martis Valley until the funding issues at hand could be rectified.
On March 26 of that year, Placer amended its county code to allow fire-protection district approval to come from either Truckee Fire, Placer County Fire, or Cal Fire.
Over a year later, the Placer County Planning Commission modified the Schaffer’s Mill Conditional Use Permit language to allow either Truckee Fire or Placer County Fire’s signature for plan approvals.
Placer demurred to the district’s complaint on all causes of action. A demurrer essentially means that even if, in this case, Truckee Fire’s claims are true, they do not warrant a lawsuit. Judge Rockwell overruled two of the three demurrers, while sustaining the third demurrer on the fourth cause of action, but allowed the district time to amend its legal stance.
Truckee Fire did so, submitting an amended complaint — to which Placer demurred once again on the fourth cause of action. The judge overruled this demurrer in mid-May, leading to the current wait for Placer County’s response, due by July 6.
From there, the case will likely enter a discovery phase, during which both sides will exchange information, evidence, and witness interviews.
Among its requests for ruling, Truckee Fire hopes for legal mandates to the county to allocate and pay the district its AB 8 share of Zone 7 property tax revenue; a permanent injunction from denying Truckee Fire its AB 8 share; and a declaration that Placer’s decision to approve development in the Martis Valley area without general plan compliance violates the law.
TRUCKEE FIRE’S Station 96, serving the Martis Valley 24 hours a day, seven days a week since 2000. Courtesy photo
What other districts are involved (and whose side are they on)?
If Truckee Fire is allotted any amount of AB 8, which is a limited pot of money, other entities receiving property tax from Zone 7 will take a hit.
When it first filed its complaint, Truckee Fire did not include other taxing entities involved in Zone 7 who could be impacted. Placer called this out in a demurrer, requiring an amended complaint to include the following as real parties in interest:
Truckee Tahoe Airport District, Placer County Resource Conservation District, Tahoe Truckee Unified School District, Sierra Community College District, Placer County Office of Education, Placer County Water Agency, Tahoe Forest Hospital District, Tahoe Truckee Sanitation Agency, Tahoe City Public Utility District, and Truckee Sanitary District. All 10 are listed as parties on the side of Placer County.
Of the parties, the airport district, Tahoe City PUD, Tahoe Truckee Unified School District, Placer County Office of Education, and Truckee Sanitary District have filed joinders at some point, formally aligning themselves with Placer’s arguments. For the latest set of demurrers, the school district and office of education did not file joinders while the remaining three did.
Why other parties of interest didn’t file a joinder can be for many reasons, including being able to benefit from a decision without the cost or exposure; different interests than defendant’s strategies; and taking a wait-and-see approach.
“While the core of this dispute is between the fire district and the county, the legal remedy sought, a reapportionment of ad valorem property taxes, carries an outsized potential impact on a broad coalition of local public agencies that provide essential services to our community,” TTAD General Manager Robb Etnyre wrote in an email. “Because property tax revenue is a ‘zero-sum’ system under California law, any significant shift in these percentages means the funding must be drawn from the existing shares of other local entities.”
In its 2026 budget, TTAD anticipates receiving about $10 million in property tax revenue — about 55% of its revenue for the year.
Etnyre added that the airport district’s participation in the case, as well as the other parties with interest, “is intended to ensure that the pursuit of fire protection funding does not inadvertently destabilize the budgets of our schools, our hospital, or our regional infrastructure.”
Truckee Fire has said in public statements about the case, “Placer County would prefer we ask taxpayers districtwide to approve a new property tax so that the district can have sufficient funds to fund services in Lahontan, Martis Camp and Schaffer’s Mill … Placer County has already collected substantial tax revenue, they just need to allocate it.”
In the current court case, the district is requesting its AB 8 share from the date of the final court order forward. Meanwhile, it is also asking for historical records of what it received from 1975 to 1978, which would play a role in determining the full amount Truckee Fire might have collected since the mid-1970s.
Sherry McConkey is widely known in Tahoe/Truckee as the wife of the late, famed skier and ski-BASE athlete Shane McConkey, as founder of the Shane McConkey Foundation, and a popular yoga teacher. But the story of how Sherry became such an active part of the Tahoe community started on the other side of the world.
Born to a South African mother and Persian father, Sherry entered the world under complicated circumstances. Her mother, who was a model, gave birth in an adoption home in Ireland because in the 1960s, it would have been complicated to have a mixed-race child in South Africa. When Sherry was born with blonde hair and blue eyes, her mother was able to bring her back to South Africa and raise her there.
After spending her first years in Iran, Sherry grew up near the coastal city of Durban in South Africa. By age 21, she was ready to see more of the world.
“When I was 21, I decided to travel the world and find my birth father,” Sherry said.
With South African currency stretching only so far abroad, she found herself working, traveling, and working again as she made her way across Europe.
“I had some insanely amazing adventures, great and bad, beautiful and crazy,” Sherry said. “Three years of a very innocent, naive young South African traveling the world.”
Along the way, she saw snow for the first time while visiting Switzerland and immediately fell in love with the mountains. Eventually, her search for her father led her to North America.
But shortly before she planned to meet him, everything changed.
“As I was about to come to the States to meet my dad, he left without telling me,” Sherry said. “Basically, I was like, ‘Screw you. I’m done looking. I’m done trying.’”
Without a destination in mind, Sherry followed recommendations from friends and found herself driving to Tahoe.
“I found it miraculous,” she said. “As I drove up the West Shore and the harvest moon was coming out of the lake, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this place is amazing.’”
What was supposed to be a single winter stay has now turned into 36 years.
Tahoe became even more meaningful after she met professional skier Shane McConkey. Together they built a life and raised their daughter, Ayla. When Shane died in a ski-BASE accident in Italy in 2009, Sherry considered leaving the region.
GURU: Sherry McConkey is a popular yoga teacher at Palisades Yoga. She is pictured here at her retreat in Nicaragua. Photos courtesy Sherry McConkey
“When Shane died, the community just wrapped their arms around Ayla and me,” she said. “It was like a family around me. I was like, ‘How am I ever going to leave this?’”
The years that followed were marked by loss throughout the community. Many longtime locals remember the early 2000s as a period of repeated tragedies.
“I got to a point where I was like, ‘How much more can I take?’” Sherry said. “But when I looked at other places to go, I would realize I couldn’t leave my Tahoe family.”
Instead, she stayed and poured her energy into giving back.
In the years following Shane’s death, Sherry helped establish the Shane McConkey Foundation. What began as a way to support environmental causes the couple cared about grew into programs that are now nationwide. Since its founding in 2011, the nonprofit has donated one million dollars to environmental causes, kids health and wellness, and projects that impact the Tahoe/Truckee region.
PMS: Sherry McConkey (in red) with her daughter, Ayla, at the Pain McShlonkey, an annual snowblade contest put on by her foundation, the Shane McConkey Foundation.
“When I first started the foundation, I think I was still in shock,” Sherry said. “We didn’t quite know what to do.”
One of its most successful projects grew from a student environmental initiative led by a teacher at Donner Trail Elementary partaking in the Shane McConkey Eco Challenge. Today, the foundation’s Don’t Drop the Top program operates lid collection sites throughout the region that have diverted 8,200 pounds of plastic from local landfills.
“The kids partaking in the Eco Challenges are mind-blowing and so amazing,” Sherry said. “It gives me hope for the future.”
LOVE: Sherry McConkey and her daughter, Ayla, who is now 20.
For Sherry, the foundation reflects the same philosophy that defined Shane’s life: maximizing enjoyment in life.
“The foundation, in a nutshell, is a combination of fun and not taking life so seriously, but then intense and taking life really seriously,” she said. “A good balance.”
After decades in Tahoe, that balance continues to guide her. The woman who once crossed continents searching for connection ultimately found it in a mountain town that became family.
“My hope for Tahoe is to become the most environmentally conscious town in the world,” Sherry said. “It’s breathtakingly beautiful, and you only have one life. Live it.”
It’s midnight in the middle of nowhere on the Trans-Siberian Railway but sleep is far from mind. Russian train-riders are gathered in the bar car, laughing and dancing around the ragtag string band that’s swigging vodka and making up funny songs on the spot.
The bandmembers are a bunch of Americans, in-country for the 2018 World Cup, and rather than geopolitical hostilities there’s a warmth of human connection forged around global sport and the universal language of music.
TRAIN JAM: Jeremiah Kent (middle) and Martin Cavada (foreground) playing tunes and giving smiles at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Photo by Ryan Salm
“We ended up being the house band on the Trans-Siberian for a week,” guitarist Ryan Salm remembered. “It was before the war [in Ukraine]. We ended up befriending generals and regular people, just singing songs and staying up all night.”
Salm is a founding member of the Home Team String Band, the Tahoe/Truckee-based group that’s traveled to the last four World Cups — bringing an open-armed vibe of music, good times, and cross-cultural connection as they celebrate the unifying power of soccer’s biggest stage.
THE HOME TEAM’S BUS, painted by Ben Williams of Truckee, does not have a nickname yet, but members of the band are pretty sure it will by the time the World Cup is over. Photos courtesy Paul Raymore
This year’s World Cup will be played in North and Central America from June 11 to July 19, with the bulk of the matches taking place in the United States.
“We’ve been welcomed wherever we’ve gone,” said Dan Hurley, the group’s unofficial musical coordinator who, along with Salm, also plays in the Tahoe-based band The Inappropriators. “I’m most looking forward to hosting, and to giving back to the world what they’ve given for us. We are going to show a welcoming spirit.”
To do so, the band bought an old Bluebird school bus and undertook a group-effort, custom build-out, readying their “Schoolie” to be a traveling home, fan-zone (with two TVs and a projector screen), music venue, and cultural welcome center. They’ll make and hand out grilled cheese sandwiches and throw parties, aiming to be a gathering place where people from all over the world can hang out before, during, or after the games and have a good time.
TRANSFORMATION: Members of the Home Team String Band talk it over during a bus-buildout session.
“We’ll play a bunch of songs and hope to get people to join our band along the way,” Salm added.
Folks may join the band forever, for a day, an hour, or even just one song. After all, impromptu additions to the group are what created the Home Team in the first place. The band is now 12-plus humans strong, but it all started back in 2010 with three Tahoe locals who just wanted to go the World Cup in South Africa.
Salm arrived on the continent before the event began and traveled overland from Ethiopia (guitar and harmonica in tow) to South Africa. He knew Paul Raymore and Hurley independently, and they all made plans to meet up before the matches began.
TRANSPORTATION: When the Home Team String Band found themselves in a dry country for the 2022 World Cup, they traded beer for bikes and cycled to the games in Qatar. Photo by Ryan Salm
Prior to linking up with them, Salm was checking out of a bungalow in Malawi just as another guy with a guitar was checking in. He was from L.A., and Salm told him he lived in Tahoe. The guy’s first question was, “Have you been to High Sierra Music Festival?”
Salm smiled. “I go every year,” he said. The connection was instant and the two made sure they’d reconnect in South Africa — and boom, Jeremiah Kent was added to the roster.
Similar serendipity ensued at the USA vs. England game in Rustenberg when an American approached the group and it was discovered they had a mutual friend in Tahoe. He introduced himself as Pete Blanchard and they all hung out that night. “We had an empty spot in our car,” Salm said, “and the next day Pete was part of the crew.”
They met Tahoe-ite Trevor Husted at the USA vs. Algeria knockout match and the group of travel-seeking, soccer-loving musicians started writing funny songs about their World Cup experiences. The bond was tight, and the Home Team String Band was born.
THE HOME TEAM STRING BAND celebrates euphorically at a World Cup match. Photo courtesy Paul Raymore
Everyone has a nickname. Someone who joined eight years ago will always be New Guy (Dane Halter). Added in 2014 were Hulké (Martin Cavada), Hylando (Rylan Cordova), and Maximus (Kurt Beckering). Then there’s Godfather (Paul Raymore), Captain Jebbers (Kent), and Handsome (Hurley), among others.
The nicknames are written on the back of the bandmate’s personal Sweatsedo — a sweet, custom-made velour track suit — in the local language of whatever country they are in. Sometimes the names get lost in translation. In Russia, for example, Trevor Husted’s “T-Bone” read as “T-Steak.”
Eight years later, Husted is still T-Steak.
Blanchard earned his original nickname, Granada (Spanish for grenade), due to his proclivity for explosive late-night antics, but on the Trans-Siberian he turned sweet. On a short stop, he ran out and bought flowers for the Russian bartendress. She received them well and started calling him Pupsik — a term of endearment either romantic or maternal meaning something akin to “cutie.” The boys couldn’t resist that one either, and his nickname forever changed to Pupsik.
There’s an origin story, of course, for the nicknames. In 2010, the original crew was driving on a dirt road in Lesotho, the small, mountainous nation landlocked by South Africa, when a couple of locals boys threw a small rock at the vehicle. “Stop the car!” boomed Salm’s voice. In a flash he was running into the African plains after the half-laughing, half-screaming perpetrators.
The team was beyond impressed by Salm’s speed. Right then and there he became “Cheetah” — and the naming began.
The young-adult sons of Raymore and Halter, Ethan and Nathan respectively, will hop on the bus for their first Home Team action this World Cup. “They’re good kids but they haven’t done much yet,” Hurley said. “They’ll be known collectively as JV until they prove themselves worthy of joining the varsity and earning a nickname.”
Not your typical band
The group’s gigs aren’t pre-booked shows in concert halls, rather impromptu busking-type sessions played in crowded subways, outside stadiums, and on bustling city streets.
“My favorite thing about it is that most of our material is written in the moment,” Hurley said, noting that the chord progressions are made up on the spot and the lyrics freestyled. “You write a song about a new person you’re hanging out with or the score of the game, a funny time at the bar or the street scene in Brazil we’re looking at.”
Many of their stream of consciousness songs, in a nod to true art, only ever exist once. Some, however, are played again and refined over time to become part of the band’s growing catalogue.
“We want people coming into it to feel welcome. It’s about the fun, the merriment, the global soccer-sports-music brotherhood that we’ve all come to know and love so much.”
~ Dan Hurley, unofficial musical director of The Home Team String Band, on the 2026 World Cup
And while they’ll mix in some covers — “California Dreaming,” “Hotel California,” and “Born in the U.S.A” are oft-requested when overseas — there’s never anything like a planned-out set list, which appeals to Hurley’s artistic sensibilities. “It’s total musical freedom,” he said.
In addition to the soccer and the music, adventure is a big part of the Home Team’s overall gameplan. On their World Cup-focused trips, they’ve hiked in national parks in Africa, explored the Amazon in Brazil, and embarked on multi-day, self-guided paddleboard trips around Russia’s Lake Baikal (the largest freshwater lake in the world and Tahoe’s sister lake), and the Arabian Sea, including in the Strait of Hormuz.
When Beckering joined the band for the 2014 Cup in Brazil, he brought along his banjo. The circular part of the instrument was white. One day he drew black markings on it to make it look like a soccer ball, and The Soccer Ball Banjo came to be.
“If there was a symbol of our band, that would be it,” Raymore declared.
The band was hitting their stride, but four years later the unthinkable happened: The U.S. failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. “It was shocking,” Salm said. “We didn’t know what to do.”
After some debate, the performers decided the show must go on — a decision that led to perhaps the band’s greatest moment, those days and nights of song and merriment as the house band on the clickety tracks of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The 2022 World Cup, held in Qatar in Nov. and Dec. ’21 to avoid the region’s stifling summer heat, featured another changeup: The vodka-swigging, beer-crushing Home Teamers found themselves in a dry country. So, they traded booze for bikes and began cycling to the games, oftentimes two matches a day, and from place to place with their instruments and antics. “A lot of people over there hadn’t seen anything like us,” Salm said.
So, what do these 2026 home games mean for the Home Team String Band?
“We want people coming into it to feel welcome,” said Hurley, who recently wrote a song called “Host the World,” which can be found on YouTube. “It’s about the fun, the merriment, the global soccer-sports-music brotherhood that we’ve all come to know and love so much.”
MAKING NEW FRIENDS is a key part of the Home Team String Band’s World Cup experiences. Ryan Salm at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
The Tahoe kickoff party takes place on June 12 at Alibi Ale Works in Truckee to watch Team USA’s opening game against Paraguay. The match starts at 6 p.m., with the pre-party starting at 4 p.m. The bus will be on site for tours and photos, and the boys will play tunes. All ages are welcome and bringing instruments is encouraged. “We’d love to see the biggest street band we can make in downtown Truckee,” Raymore said.
After that game, the Home Team will put the bus in gear and start attending matches in person. First, it’s down to San Francisco where Levi’s Stadium hosts Qatar vs. Switzerland on the 13th and Austria vs. Jordan on the 16th. Then it’s up to Seattle for Team USA’s highly anticipated June 19th match against Australia.
But the true destination is the journey — being on the bus and spreading the vibe like some version of the Merry Pranksters with a Pelé predilection and well-tuned instruments.
“We’ll stop anywhere from a town square to a dive bar or a trailer park,” Salm said. “It doesn’t need to be a million people. We’re not an arena band, it’s about intimate.”
From Seattle, the Home Team dips north of the border to catch New Zealand vs. Egypt on the summer solstice in Vancouver. Then the bus will turn around and meander south to get to L.A. in time for Team USA’s final group match June 25 at Sofi Stadium against Türkiye.
After group play the teams with the best records will advance to the knockout stages, the details of those matches being unknown until the completion of the first round. “We don’t have any idea yet where we’ll go,” Salm said, the band perhaps leaning into its ability to play things by ear. “We’ll try to follow the USA if we can.”
The Beautiful Game
Estimates are that 5.8 billion people, roughly 75% of the world population, will view the 2026 World Cup in some form — making it the most watched sporting event in human history.
Soccer, like music, is truly a global language. While there have been historical instances of violence breaking out between different fanbases, the majority of the sport’s power lies in unification.
“We may be enemies on the pitch, but before and after let’s put the differences behind us and hang out,” Salm said.
Not every minute of the band’s travels, however, has been filled with kumbaya. In Qatar, the boys were on a bus before the USA vs. Iran game. The bus was pretty much all Iranians. Some back-and-forth jarring started up that quickly turned heated, the fans at each other’s throats. “For a minute, you thought there was going to be a brawl,” Salm relayed. “But then we came together, like ‘hey, we’re all just human beings here.’”
The two countries are now at war.
There was a similar time on the Trans-Siberian Railway. “We met this guy who looked like a giant ogre, and we were all kind of intimidated,” Hurley recalled. But that mean-looking Russian played the guitar. And the guys bought him some beers. “By the end of the night he was kissing us on the forehead,” Hurley continued.
The Home Team is about getting past stereotypes, about breaking down barriers of preconceived notions of this country or that culture.
“Our adventures are a good chance to be face-to-face with people you don’t think you’ll get along with,” Hurley said. “Then you watch some soccer together and play some tunes and see what happens next.”
Mark Twain wrote that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” It seems like the Home Team String Band has picked up on what the author was putting down. Over the past 16 years, the group has set out across the globe to take in four World Cups, creating innumerable moments of beautiful connection between humans of different cultures.
They have always been visitors in a foreign land, yet wherever they have gone the Americans have been welcomed. This summer, they play host — ambassadors of our nation, doing what they can for international relations and having a good time doing it — one goal, one song, one new member of the Home Team at a time.
A Moonshine reader recently mailed us a letter, asking if we could figure out why Tahoe Forest Products (TFP), the relatively new sawmill facility in Carson City just off Highway 50, wasn’t producing. “They’re well stocked with Caldor Fire trees but no sawdust,” he wrote. “I’ve heard rumors, but what are the facts?
Indeed, the facility opened on Dec. 18, 2023, to quite a bit of fanfare — local publications, as well as Bloomberg, reported on just how critical Tahoe Forest Products would be in supporting healthy forests, fire recovery efforts, the local economy, and more.
But our reader is right. Two and a half years later, and TFP is sitting silent. I reached out to Kevin Leary, CEO of Hallador Investments, which is the primary investor in the facility, to understand the latest. ~ AH
There were rumors in late 2025 that the facility was closing and/or reporting bankruptcy. A Carson Now article reported that wasn’t the case, and that the facility was in the process of “retooling and upgrading” operations and machinery. Is that still the status, and how far along are those updates? Will the facility operate at full capacity soon?
Kevin Leary, CEO of Hallador: TFP did pause production in mid-2025 and it remains paused. The sawmill facility was originally designed using the lowest-possible cost machinery, meaning old and heavily used, which was a mistake. Too many breakdowns and too slow a production pace meant the initial facility was not financially sustainable. We also paused construction of the planer mill (which will sit to the north of the sawmill building, closer to Highway 50), to avoid making the same mistake twice. We expect to commence upgrades in June, and to be in production a year from now. More modern improvements will enable the facility to operate sustainably.
“Too many breakdowns and too slow a production pace meant the initial facility was not financially sustainable.”
~ Kevin Leary, Hallador Investments CEO
How is the facility funded, and are there concerns for ongoing financial support?
The company is funded by local private investors who care deeply about our region’s forest health, water quality, recreation, and cost of living (including home insurance costs), and who want to support the local economy. TFP will continue to have the support of the owners as long as the prospect of sustainable operations remains.
How is TFP working to address complaints by neighbors, including noise and bright lights?
Several of our neighbors have direct communication access to on-site management at TFP. In the past, we have worked with neighbors to address specific concerns, including repositioning lights and replacing diesel generators with fixed power. We engaged a local landscaping company to install several hundred thousand dollars [worth] of trees and plants along Bucks Way to the south and west.
We should add that occasionally complaints are directed at us that are not of TFP’s making. There are other tenants on the same parcel, and we have received complaints (e.g. dust) that are outside of our lease area or control. In other cases, loud nighttime noises or truck lights might be attributed to TFP but have nothing to do with the mill.
BACKLOG: Logs currently filling the Tahoe Forest Products facility outside Carson City are primarily from local fuels reduction treatments over the past few years, though a few remain from the 2021 Caldor Fire. Illustration by Sarah Miller/Moonshine Ink
Is the facility feeling impacts from national changes to the U.S. Forest Service, which is undergoing massive restructuring?
TFP tries to maintain close relationships with the USFS at both the local and national levels. In our view, the goal of the changes underway is to move decision-making to the local level and empower local leadership, accountability, and action. There are layers of hierarchy and bureaucracy that probably should go away, like there are in any organization that has been around over a century. (If the readers want an analogy, they can listen to Jon Stewart interview Ezra Klein, co-author of Abundance, on the rollout of rural broadband, administered by a different federal agency. [Editor’s note: Listen to Why We Can’t Have Nice Things with Ezra Klein on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart wherever you listen to podcasts.])
Locally, we have seen some disruptions, and certainly some over-extended and tired USFS friends picking up more responsibilities. But our hope and expectation are that the changes result in a localized, commonsense approach to forest management. To that end, the USFS recently awarded our partner, the Washoe Tribe, a 20-year Master Stewardship Agreement to empower the tribe and partners to take on a larger role in planning and implementing forest health treatments.
Are trees from the 2021 Caldor Fire still on site?
Yes, but very few. The logs received in the past two years are from fuels reduction treatments (i.e., green trees, not burned or salvaged) in the Tahoe Basin and surrounding national forests (Inyo, Humboldt Toiyabe, Eldorado, Tahoe) plus a smaller number from neighborhood and HOA fuels reduction projects.
One of the biggest shocks to my system when I — a type-A queen all about quick turnarounds and addressing issues exactly when they arise — joined MoonshineInk back in May 2019, was adapting to what we at the office call “Moonshine Time.”
As our readers likely know, we are a free, independent monthly print publication with a (again, free) website that includes both print content as well as online exclusives. We put out a roundup of news briefs every Friday, touching on various happenings during the preceding week, from special district decisions to free events to key hirings or departures and so on.
But what we really sink our teeth into is the print edition. The news articles especially are where we dive deep, exploring topics critical to our Truckee/North Tahoe community in ways that haven’t been addressed by any other news organization.
As Mountain Gazette editor and owner Mike Rogge wrote in 2023, “[Moonshine Ink is] holding up a mirror to who we are as a community.”
But as a primarily monthly focused newspaper with a core staff of eight, we have the tricky challenge of considering each edition’s timeline. For example, this edition, June 2026, runs June 11 to July 8. That means we’re planning for July 4 content in early May, when we sit down to discuss the June edition.
ABOUT 80% of the time, we are focused on the print publication. File photo
When news stories capture the nation’s interest, like the Liberty Utilities and NV Energy debacle earlier this year, we end up in an odd limbo state of watching approximately 1 million other outlets cover the situation while we’re working in the background to pull as many pieces together as possible for a publication date a few weeks out. My story, A Shock to the System, came out a few weeks after said 1 million outlets reported on the situation.
There’s also the controversial herbicide glyphosate being used to treat forests and more in our region. Again, this has been reported on by broader outlets — but we offer an in-depth lens on Truckee/Tahoe impacts.
It can be frustrating, yes (especially for this type-A queen), but I actually don’t mean for it to come off that way. It’s more so an opportunity to educate our readers about how our brains at Moonshine operate. About 80% of the time, we are thinking about what will come out the second Thursday of each month (except January; collective relaxation time for staff), and how our articles will both be as up to date as possible and highly informative.
Does that mean we don’t produce breaking news content? Not at all. We turn out articles on timely information quite often. Most recently, there was the approval of the Village at Palisades development, and the tragic Castle Peak avalanche. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, we were constantly updating our readers with daily online updates on the situation. But we only have so many staffers, and as much as I wish otherwise, there are only 24 hours in the day.
To keep up and even expand our ability to cover more and increase publication of those online-exclusive stories, I urge you to consider becoming a Moonshine Ink Member. Like I wrote in a November 2023 Membership update, we want to cover more stories in-depth, but we need help to get there.
After 15 years of fighting, on May 12 the Placer County Board of Supervisors approved the downsized development project for Palisades Tahoe. And the movement to keep Tahoe Truckee True had succeeded: we cut more than 70% of the original development proposal and kept a massive indoor waterpark out of Olympic Valley.
“What’s next?” someone turned to me and asked. “What’s next for Sierra Watch?”
The answer is spelled out in our mission. It’s what we do day after day, year after year: “Sierra Watch secures conservation outcomes to protect the natural resources, mountain communities, and timeless values of the Tahoe Sierra.”
We can see the results in our shared landscape; places like Donner Summit, where we can hike the Sierra Watch Trail to the crest of the mountains and gaze upon Royal Gorge, which was once threatened with luxury development, but is now protected and open to the public.
It’s manifested in Martis Valley, on Waddle Ranch Preserve — once slated for golf courses, shopping malls, and subdivisions — now secured as wildlife habitat, scenic trails, and open space.
And now, in Olympic Valley, where there will never be a giant indoor waterpark.
We’ve achieved incredible results since local residents started Sierra Watch in 2001. But what about the next 25 years?
To answer that question, we’ve been debriefing our strategies and successes, interviewing partners and colleagues, and thinking through how we can best apply what we’ve learned to accomplish more in the decades to come. We’ve got three top priorities.
First is finishing the job — fulfilling our commitments to further the success of our long-term campaigns.
In Olympic Valley, we maintain our presence to make sure that development fits into the limits established in our settlement agreement and that no new proposals threaten the values we’ve worked to protect. In Martis Valley, where Sierra Watch got its start, that means working with our conservation allies to secure the capstone to more than 20 years of strategic and disciplined commitment: permanent protection of the 7,500-acre Tahoe Martis headwaters property on the rim of the Tahoe Basin.
And for White Wolf, between Olympic Valley and Alpine Meadows, we remain vigilant, ready to further engage in the public planning process for the proposed resort on the 275-acre property.
Second, Sierra Watch is committed to assessing emerging threats in the Sierra and identifying strategic opportunities. In the months ahead, we’ll take a proactive approach to identifying landscapes at risk and determining where we can apply our proven formula for conservation advocacy.
Third, we will make sure we are telling our story. We get calls from folks all over the American West, from Taos to Tetonia, who want to know how local communities can stand up to developer excess and, in the immortal words of local hero Robb Gaffney, “honor mountain culture.” We — not just Sierra Watch but the entire Tahoe/Truckee community — have a great case study of grassroots success to share with the world. We offer hope and provide proof that we can indeed work together to protect the places we love.
It’s a commitment and a legacy we can all be proud of. And because what we strive to protect is timeless, these past 25 years are just the blink of an eye. It’s our moment in a multi-generational commitment to mountain values.
And we’re just getting started.
~ Tom Mooers has been a leader in defending great places in California for more than 30 years. Before joining Sierra Watch as founding executive director in 2001, he was trained at Green Corps and worked for the Greenbelt Alliance and the League to Save Lake Tahoe. He lives in Nevada City.
The latest environmental controversy in Tahoe isn’t a development project, a wildfire, or a fight over lake clarity.
