Re: What is it with "keep Tahoe Blue" stickers on SUV's
The answer is very simple. Tahoe, both north and south shore, is experiencing a large influx of people resulting in a lot of new development around the lake. This new development results in increased amounts of impervious surface, which concentrates and redirects stormwater flows. As a result, during the stormseason, the more development is also equal to larger flows traveling into various drainage culverts. These larger flow also transport more sediment into Lake Tahoe.
Lake Tahoe has a crazy long hydraulic retention time, ie., approximately 700-year hydraulic retention time (Goldman et al., p. . 312, 1989).
If you don't know what a retention time is, it is basically the amount of time a waterbody retains physical things such as sediment, or even chemicals such as major inorganics.
In a nutshell, the more development that occurs, results in more sediment transport due to more impervious surface which results in decreasing the visibility of Lake Tahoe among many other water quality impacts such as nutrient issues.
This is why the "Keep Tahoe Blue" sticker exists. Why is it hypocritical to have so many SUVs that have the sticker? Well, simply put, it's Tahoe, and 4X4s are a necessity.
~N
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