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Show A6 The Salt Lake Tribune NATION Friday, July 25, 1997 Clinton Serves Notice: Global Warming’s Real Clinton, Gore Headline Tahoe Ecology Summit KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE Its slopes attract skiers from around the world. Its lakefront real estate sells for $1 million an acre. Frank Sinatra sang in its nightclubs, and Mark Twain marveled its waters were “not merely nt, but dazzlingly, brilYet despite more than a century of popularity, Lake Tahoe, America’s most famous alpine lake, is in trouble. Erosion andalgae threaten to turn its sapphireblue waters a murky green. Its president, the vice president and several Cabinet secretaries com- anddipsits toe in the debate Today and Saturday, President Clinton and Vice President Al Gorewill visit the lake for a twoday national summit to discuss waysof maintaining Lake Tahoe's economywhile reversing the area’s ecological decline. “The lake has gotten in trouble gradually,” said Sen. HarryReid, D-Nev., who asked Clinton to come last year. “It’s happened over an extended period of time. It's going to take an extended pe- riod of time to solve. But we can doit.” Believed to be thefirst official visit by any president to Lake Ta- hoe, the summit will feature a series of workshops, speeches and tours with scientists and commu- nity leaders. Goreis scheduledto visit South Lake Tahoe today as part of a four-day vacation with his family. Clinton will arrive Saturday at In- cline Village, Nev As their momentin the national spotlight approaches, Tahoe-area scientists, environmentalleaders, business_officials and politicians hope the summit will draw new attention — and perhapsmillions of dollars — to help restore the ills caused by 130 years of logging, wetlands destruction, poorly planned. development and auto- mobile traffic around Lake Taoe. “It’s very exciting,” said Ro- chelle Nason, executive director “is no longer a theory but now a help the lake.” fact.” tains, Lake Tahoe lies 6.225 feet abovesealevel, two-thirds in California and one-third in Nevada. tists was Round Oneof Clinton’s Ringed by snow-capped moun- The hourlong East Room roundtable discussion by scien- public relations campaign to build support for steps necessary to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that scientists predict will heat the planet by 2 to 6 degrees The lake holds 27 times as fornia’s biggest man-made reservoir. If all of Tahoe's icy water were dumpedout, it would flood California 14 inches deep. fear could surpass the Oakland House on Thursday to convince Americans that climate change rious interest, and that can only tury, then decimated during re- Hills blaze in destruction. This weekend, those problems and others will take center stage as the White House travels west Nobel laureates at the White ing. There's no doubt there's a se- much water as Lake Shasta. Cali- ignite an infernothatfire officials WASHINGTON — Five years after he lampooned George Bush for pooh-poohing global warming, President Clinton gathered People keepasking us, ‘Is this just a photo op?’ But wesee the forests, clear-cut in the 19th cencent drought years and nowinfested with bark beetles, could THE ASSOCIATED PRESS of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, an environmental group based in South Lake Tahoe. Fahrenheit overthe next century. Thepresident pledged to bring a U.S. commitment to “realistic Yet that water isn't as crystalclear asit once was. During the past 30 years, Lake and binding” emissions limits to treaty talks in Kyoto, Japan, in famousclarity, which many scientists considered a barometer of December. “Between now and then, we have to work with the American searchers lowering a hubcapsized disk into the water could see it 102 feet below the surface. Now commitment,” Clinton said. “We have evidence, we see the train Tahoe has lost 31 percentofits the region's health. In 1968, re- people to get them to share that coming; but most ordinary Americans, in their day-to-day lives, can’t hear the whistle blowing.” A panelof sevenscientists, including three Nobel prize-winners, took turns painting a nearapocalyptic picture of life as the theycan see only 70 feet “We're losing about a foot and a half ofvisibility a year now,” said Charles Goldman. a profes- sor of limnology — the study of inland waterways — at the Uni- versity of California-Davis. Such declines also are causing a gradualloss of oxygenthat, if left unchecked, could eventually harm the deep-water trout and other organisms, he said. “It’s fixable,” said Goldman. whohas studied Lake Tahoe since 1958 and serves as director of the UC-Davis Tahoe Research Group. “Butit’s got to be done in the next decade or the transparency of the lakewill be lost.” Two culprits are most responsible for the clouding water: sediment and algae. Erosion caused by poorly constructed roads, logging operations, ski slopes and subdivisions built too close to the water's edge in the 1950s and ‘60s washes 7,000 tons of soil every year into the lake — roughly 19 times as Also, developers in years past filled in or dredged 75 percent of suspended for years. Then there are the algae play critical role in filtering and cleaning the water. Manyof the harmful practices blooms, which are growing at 5 percenta year. Until the early 1960s, treated sewage was dumped intothe lake. umping it full of algae-spawning nitrogen. Today, smog from automobiles is the main source of the Lake Tahoe’s wetlands, which have been halted since 1968, when California, Nevada and River,flows out, so there is little and casinos. tana’s Glacier National Park. “The overwhelming balance of evidence andscientific opinion is that it is no longer a theory but now fact that global warmingis real,” Clinton said. He promised to amplify that argument in ap- pearances around the country and at a White House conference on global change in October. Corporate lobbyists and conservative lawmakers have pressed Clinton to consider that such limits could cost jobs. the series of Hollywood Legends stamps, this one honoring actor Humphrey Bogart, goes on sale Thursday. The vertical commemorative features a portrait of Bogart by Michael Deas, based on a poster created for “The Big Sleep,” a 1946 movie in which Bogart were stunned when postal officials decidednotto issue just one stamp, but a sheet of 15. That meanta lot of discussions over whichdollsto select and which to reject. Doll experts said that postal of- ficials insisted that all the dolls depicted must have been made in the United States and they didn’t want contemporary dolls, lest they be accused of endorsing a commercial product. That requirement saw an end to suggestions that Barbie and the Cabbage tress Shirley Temple ing rain and snowstorms. Compounding the problem is lake and only one, the Truckee chenco of Oregon State University predicted that warming would ultimately wipe out the sugarmakers in New England and, by 2030, melt all the glaciers in Mon- Coos and Betsy McCall did. Doll collectors say they got a lot of people — 67,000 by their count — to sign petitions for doll stamps. However, the collectors rally. Lake Tahoe has distinctive geology within a steep mountain ba- housing a year in the 200,000acre Tahoe Basin, for example, blocking construction near boom of the 1950s added. Marine biologist Jane Lub- cessful U.S. sheet. building permits for residential buil percent over the past century, he Barbie, Shirley Temple and the Cabbage Patchdolls didn’t make the cut, but Raggedy Ann, Baby The agency only issues 300 lake’s nitrogen. washed into the and "60s that led to new subdiviSions_ grading. road construction rainfall in the United States by 10 starred. In addition, 17 American dolls water from the atmosphere durthe San Joaquin Valley floods were an omen, said Stanford professor Stephen Schneider. “The increasing frequency and magnitude of these could very well be the first signs thatthe canary in the cageis starting to quiver,” he said. Warming trends have spiked Congress created the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a bureaucracythat sets strict building Tules. much as would reach there natu- sin. In all, 63 streams flowinto the ‘THE WASHINGTON POST WASHINGTON — Thethird in entering the lake takes 700 years to leave. Goldman notes. As a result. sediments can sit borne diseases such as malaria. This year’s severe Midwest and Bogie and Dolls on Stamps Bob Galbraith/The Associated Press Two kids enjoy the sunshinewhile playing on rocks near Sand Harbor on the Nevada shore of Lake Tahoe. The water's clarity has dropped 30 percentin the past 30 years,scientists say. flushing action. A drop of water Earth heats up: killer heat waves, encroaching seas, and the northward spread of tropical insect- streams and othersensitive zones, a practice that has drawn severe criticism and lawsuits from private property rights groups. won the honorof being placed on 15 postage stampsthat go on sale Mondayin Anaheim, Calif. Patch dolls, two of the most suc- image on a stamp, despite the popularity of the doll depicting heras a youngscreen actress. 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