Some of the history on the Lake Tahoe basin. Back in the 19th Century, the entire area was clear-cut, to provide timbers used for shoring up the enormous mining enterprises in Virginia City, to the east and on the other side of the Washoe Valley. These original trees were cut and sent to sawmills in Carson City, from where the timbers were hauled, first by wagons drawn by teams of horses or mules, then later by the Virginia & Truckee railroad. The trees were sent down to Carson City on flumes constructed with slabs from the sawmills, and with water pumped up from the Tahoe Basin. The logs were sent down the flumes with the flow of water behind them, and got up a great deal of speed in the nearly 3,000 feet of drop in the seven miles or so to the base of Eagle valley.
By 1880, about the time the Comstock Lode was about played out, not an original tree was standing in the basin. There was considerable second growth, but mostly, small in size, and not nearly as valuable for mining timbers. About this time, a great wave of remorse came over the "reformers" about the original exploitation of the Tahoe basin, and further development was slowed down. While some tree harvest continued, and some small amount of growth was still going on, by the time the "environmentalist" movement got under way, almost all activity concerning forest management had come to a dead halt. Trees died, and the tree beetles chewed away on them until they fell, making a huge hodgepodge of decaying matter on the forest floor. It was the washing into the lake of this decaying organic matter that was causing the turbidity of the water. Outdoor privies and poorly maintained septic disposal systerms were NOT the problem they were made out to be.
With controlled burns (removing the dead understory in the forest), the amount of decaying organic matter washing into the lake (with the spring melt of the snow cover) was greatly reduced, with the resultant effect of the water becoming more clear.
Given time, and with intelligent application of known techniques of forest management, wilderness areas can continue to produce and still be a valuable preserve.
They feel that as California's aristocracy from the western metrosexual areas, they are entitled to rule over Californa's ruralsexual environment in ways that the illegitimate squatters in the Sierra, including and especially the Tahoe Basin, should simply always acquiess to under any circumstances.
Afterall, since the infamous "Cows Don't Vote" decision by the Earl Warren Supreme Court, these riff-raff rural squatters are easily out-voted and need to be ruthlessly "rooted out!" All they ever do is ruin the esthetics of such sacred EnvironMental Sanctuaries to the detriment of the esthetically in tune western Californians, don'tcha know?