Keep Tahoe green

Non-profit group Sustainable Tahoe sets goals in threes. Their mission is to target the economy, environment and community through their diverse programs, and to encourage stewardship by “showcasing, cultivating and connecting models of success.” On their website, they ask, “What do [the] Monterey Bay Aquarium, Epcot Center and Switzerland Public Transit have in common? They made conservation, education and public transit engaging, profitable and sustainable.”

“How can we do things that benefit the water—the entire watershed—and have fun?” says chief visionary officer Jacquie Chandler. “We think it’s possible.”

Chandler defines the watershed as not just Lake Tahoe, but the regional landscape, including other bodies of water, forests and wildlife. Sustainable Tahoe’s goal for 2012 is to take past programs to the next level to establish Northern Nevada as a year-round geotourist hotspot to immerse residents in the environment and to help jumpstart the economy.

“A lot of what we’re doing is a showcase for geotourism,” Chandler says. “Our goal is to eventually have it so that locals in the area are so well aware of these geotourism activities that it transforms the economy in the region. There’s something to do here all the time that falls in line with geotourism.”

In 2010, Sustainable Tahoe hosted a stewardship congress, which gathered leaders of regional sustainable organizations and companies and established an opportunity to work together.

“We put them right on the beach, and a lot of people came who had never had a reason to interact with each other,” says Chandler. “We told them, ‘Leave your guns at home and come with an open mind’ to better understand what the other groups are doing.”

The first Sustainable Tahoe Expo was held in September and attracted a crowd of more than 600 people. The entire event offered alternative transportation options, including shuttles, water taxis, walking and biking trails, and kayaking. The expo was designed to circle the entire lake and allow visitors to navigate around it while participating in activities like hiking or listening to a drum circle.

According to board member John Hara, the expo is a project that requires a lot of community support, but that’s what makes it a unique event.

“The transition is to have the community own it,” he says. “It’s a community event so what we’re really trying to do is have different leadership groups to come out and start to their own components of it.”

The expo is the first step toward establishing geocenters around the area that offer free, environmentally conscious activities to locals and visitors.

“They would function like huts within a five-mile ratio, and relate to culture, heritage, recreation and all of those activities, connected with alternative transit,” Chandler says.

Another project in the works is the Tahoe Blue Card, which is a card that can be used as a transportation pass for buses or boats connected to expo activities. It can link to a smartphone app that provides recommendations for businesses supporting sustainability, such as restaurants cooking and serving locally grown food. Chandler hopes that offering new and inexpensive ways to learn about the area will increase local involvement.

“Instead of using flyers and brochures, we want to take people on a hike and show them where the bears are,” Chandler says. “We’re rich with native, incredible adventures.”