Lake loses out to civilization

By Carl Heintze

This is the story of a lake and "civilization." In a way, it is also the story of California. The lake is called Donner. It is named after the ill-fated Donner Party that came west by wagon train in 1846, and got stalled by the Sierra Nevada winter. Many of the party died. Some survived by eating one another, and all passed into history.

In 1846 the lake was pristine, three miles long and a mile wide, a natural lake carved into the Sierra Nevada by a glacier about 10,000 years ago. Its surface rose and fell with the seasons, emptying into the Truckee River. The river ran out into Pyramid Lake and the Carson Sink.

Today the lake lies along Interstate 80 near the town of Truckee. In fact, since Truckee incorporated and became not a ramshackle village and railroad division point but a kind of mountain Carmel, the lake has been within the town limits of Truckee.

The lake is ringed on three sides by homes, most of them occupied only in the summer. The fourth side of the lake, the east end, is a state park named for the Donners, even though the Donners themselves never camped there. Instead they lived and died (and some were perhaps eaten) a mile or two to the east in a bog, now a picnic ground (ironic, yes?), on State Highway 89.

Donner is still a natural lake, but its level is controlled. Each spring a weir at the east end is closed to allow snowmelt and runoff to fill the lake. Each fall the weir comes down and the lake level drops by about 10 feet. This raising and lowering of the lake is one of man's first depredations.

Access to the lake is possible at the state park beach, at piers along the north side of the lake and at three public beaches owned by a recreation district. The rest of the shoreline is private and lined with docks, or by a private beach at the west end owned by the Donner Lake Property Owners Association. The lake is open to boating of all kinds, including ski boats, jet skis, outboards, sailboats and rowboats. The use of two-cycle engines which, in turn use gasoline with MTBE, now is among the pollution threats the lake faces.

North of the lake is the Tahoe-Donner subdivision, a rural development of 4,000 homes. Tahoe-Donner residents have access to the lake through a tiny beach next to the state park, all 4,000 of them. The homeowners' beach at the west end of the lake now has over 700 members, most of whom have boats. It recently voted a cap on its membership. There simply no longer is room to park members' boats on its marina.

Until two years ago a fourth of July fireworks display at the west end of the lake drew thousands of spectators. It was suspended, probably forever, after a riot broke out at the fireworks site; a deputy sheriff was injured and her evacuation was possible only by helicopter.

Homeowners at the west end of the lake now are being forced to boil all their domestic water. This edict came about because the private water company that serves the lake's west end of the site of most of the homes could no longer comply with the Environmental Protection Agency rules concerning the use of surface lake water.

Most of the water the company dispenses comes from the lake itself. It is no longer possible to be sure microorganisms are being eliminated by chlorination and that the levels of MTBE or other contaminants are safe. The water company is supposed to be building a water treatment plant, but construction has been delayed by legal problems.

Water also was a problem earlier when Tahoe-Donner built a pumping plant near its tiny beach with the intention of removing water for its 4,000 homeowners. After a protracted legal battle the subdivision removed the pumping plant and sought water elsewhere.

Traffic also has become a problem. Insufficient parking at the three public beaches of the recreation districts sometimes makes the northwest corner of the lake look like Coney Island. Those who use the public boat launching beach must now pay to park there, but this does little to limit the number of vehicles passing by.

No easy solutions to any of these problems seem likely. Unfortunately, the lake is bordered on the north by Interstate 80, on the south by the Union Pacific Railroad and on all sides by houses. Only the problem of sewage has been resolved--temporarily.

Because the lake acquires all sewage discharge--if treated only in septic tanks those discharges were long ago banned--the sewage is collected (sometimes by pumping it uphill). It is piped to a treatment plant on the Truckee River where it is purified before the resulting water is dumped back into the river.

So Donner limps into the new century, loved to death by those who use it. And certain to get worse before things improve. One wonders what the Donners would think of it, if they were alive today. Or if they are rolling over in their graves.

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Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to SVCN.

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