This site has been quiet for a number of months now, but we want you to know that it was not because we had reduced our efforts. Quite to the contrary, we have been concentrating our efforts on a proposition that we hoped would solve the dilemma of preserving Van Norden Lake and its wetlands.
As many of you probably know, we made an offer to Truckee Donner Land Trust (TDLT) last July to buy a portion of the Summit Valley property that contained the lake and surrounding wetlands (See Figure 1). Our purpose was to offer an alternative buyer to the US Forest Service, that would remove their requirement to drain the lake and wetlands. We offered TDLT $400,000 for the property which we felt was fair considering that the property represented about 20% of the entire property. 
Figure 1. Map of proposed parcels in original purchase offer to TDLT.
Our offer included the provision that a permanent conservation easement would be applied to the land under the auspices of a non-profit organization that we would set up to administer the land. Our offer was rejected by TDLT on the grounds (if you can believe this) that our plan to preserve the lake and wetlands was contrary to the intent of the donors that contributed funds for the acquisition of the land. I know many of you reading this were donors like me who thought that was exactly what we were contributing the money for.
All was not lost, however. TDLT made a counter offer in which they would retain the ownership of the lake property, apply for the water rights to maintain a 49 acre-ft lake and notch the dam 2.2 ft to create a lake of that size. What they wanted from us was the promise that we would not oppose them during the CEQA approval process. Oh yeah and they wanted us to pay $50,000 to them to fund the effort to obtain the water rights and once the water rights were obtained we would make additional $150,000 contribution to TDLT for the future maintenance of the area. We did not in any way see this as a victory since a 49 acre-ft lake would still result in over a 60% reduction in the lake and wetlands. But we did see it as a compromise that would at least retain some lake and wetland in the valley. And so for the last 3 months we have been seriously negotiating with TDLT to make this deal a reality.
Sadly, we could not make this deal work. While we were very close, it turned out that just as before we made our offer, it was the Forest Service which proved to be the final problem. While TDLT agreed to retaining the 49 acre-ft lake, the Forest Service would not make any commitments to maintaining the lake and wetlands. In order to remove the Forest Service from the fray we proposed that TDLT retain a parcel that included 70% of the proposed lake (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Map of different parcels to be retained by TDLT.
The Forest Service refused to let TDLT retain the property containing the lake, but would agree to only the 14 acres that contained the dam. They also refused to give any sort of written agreement or easement for the TDLT to store 49 acre-ft of water on the remaining land once they acquired it. Since the Forest Service refused to participate in the agreement at all, we felt that we were right back where we started in that they would have complete control of the future of the lake with no commitment to carrying out our agreement with TDLT. This did not seem like a prudent investment of our $200,000.
All was not lost in this effort. We learned some very valuable information in our negotiations with TDLT.
- It is clear that TDLT does not really believe that a 49 acre-ft lake in the valley poses a threat to public safety as they had previously stated.
- It is also clear that there is a good possibility that water rights for a 49 acre-ft lake are obtainable.
- Finally, as we have contended all along it is really not necessary to completely drain the lake and wetlands and in fact even TDLT is willing to incorporate the presence of the lake and wetlands into their plans for the future of the Summit Valley.
So the struggle continues!
We will be describing our next steps in future posts, so please stand by.
