TRPA has authority to protect scenery

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's rules designed to protect the scenery are savior or scourge. It all depends on where you're standing.

Some are standing on their own private property, where they have invested millions and expect fundamental property rights to prevail. This group, represented by the Committee for the Reasonable Regulation of Lake Tahoe, is suing the TRPA in court to have the agency's scenic ordinances thrown out.

In essence, their argument says that scenic quality is a subjective matter. The TRPA's complicated set of guidelines, ranging from how many windows can face the lake to landscaping to dark-colored paint, tries to put into regulation - in fact, threatens to cost them the value of their property - something that can't be defined.

They have their piece of Tahoe. Now they want some peace.

Most of us, however, are standing on public property looking at the jewel of the Sierra Nevada. We have a much greater piece of Lake Tahoe and have spent many more millions, collectively, on its preservation.

The TRPA's job is to help protect not only the quality of the air, water and forests. Its duty is also to protect the scenic quality.

Assuredly this is a subjective matter. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. Why does any government set parameters for business landscaping, for the size of billboards, for setbacks from roads or other buildings? How are wild and scenic rivers chosen? How are scenic byways labeled?

The TRPA can and should enforce a scenic ordinance. It's only a matter of degrees as to what property owners will tolerate - for their own property and for their neighbor's. It's always with some irony we note that scenic beauty is considered a subjective matter, yet the value of property around Lake Tahoe is undoubtedly enhanced greatly by the views it affords.

Whether the TRPA's regulations are reasonable and effective will remain open to debate, but the court should uphold the agency's jurisdiction in the matter.