SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Representatives from across the political spectrum gathered on the shore of King’s Beach for the 27th annual Lake Tahoe Summit.
Lake Tahoe has served as a point of unity. It is a natural beauty that state representatives from both California and Nevada have worked to preserve.
The first Lake Tahoe Summit was the brainchild of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who grew up going to Lake Tahoe and has advocated for its preservation since her early days in Congress. In 1997, she hosted the first Summit alongside the late Nevada U.S. Senator Harry Reid.
What came out of the first summit was the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act (LTRA). The legislation was passed in 2000 and guaranteed hundreds of millions in investments to protect the lake.
California U.S. Senator Alex Padilla hosted this year’s summit focused on extending the LTRA, which will expire in 2024. He’s introduced legislation to extend the law for another 10 years. Padilla invited Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi to be the keynote speaker for the event.
“Sustainability and stewardship in the face of the climate crisis is so urgent. The climate emergency is posing new, unique and compounding challenges to our efforts, even to save Lake Tahoe,” Pelosi said.
Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley, who represents the Lake Tahoe region, acknowledged the need to work together in a bipartisan effort to protect the Lake in the face of climate change.
“We can all agree on the goal of protecting something that is larger than any of us — that is timeless. Sustainability and stewardship, as this year’s program is titled, is a call to action we can rally around regardless of political differences,” Kiley said.
Lake Tahoe resident Mark Potter attended the summit and said it was refreshing to see both Democrats and Republicans come together to work on preserving the place he calls home.
“We need to do this together. It’s not always one side or the other side and this seems like an easy thing to get everybody’s side on…there’s other issues that are more controversial. This shouldn’t be a controversial issue. Tahoe is special, Tahoe is different,” Potter said.
Potter wants the government leaders to focus on not just preserving the natural beauty of the lake, but making sure people from all over the world can still visit.
“You can still preserve the lake and preserve the beauty, but also let more people enjoy it, and that’s what they have to work on,” Potter noted.
Though Feinstein could not attend the event, many of the lawmakers honored the work she’s done to secure funding to preserve Lake Tahoe.
Feinstein is recovering after falling in her San Francisco home. Padilla said she was not planning on attending this year’s summit before the brief hospitalization.
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