Sierra Nevada waters work hard, play hard, and look good. But, we get into trouble when we try to make them do too much. Our quest for water quality should not be used to settle other political scores.

Tahoe waters produce power along the Truckee river, supply water to the burgeoning Reno/Sparks area, are a magnet for tourism and recreation, and provide important habitats. As we saw during the first week of 1997, reservoirs on the Truckee River, of which the active storage at Lake Tahoe is the largest, can take a huge flood and turn it into a big flood.

The Lake and its wetlands have a tremendous capacity for self purification. Unfortunately, the same processes by which Lake waters purify themselves clouds the Lake with algae. Our choices are to either accept some loss of clarity or fight fierce to keep polluting nutrients out of the Lake. Losses to date notwithstanding, we chose the later course. Now we face two questions. How do we best apply what we know? How far will we go?

We have done a lot to control nutrient inflow to Lake Tahoe, including very tight regulation of land use and its runoff. However, due to the vagaries of history and politics, our efforts have not always been strategic. Development of portions of the Truckee Marsh was a strategic error. Marshes purify runoff from developed and undeveloped forest lands, alike. Compensating for this loss by controlling land use upstream and on other tributaries to the Lake is tough. Moreover, even if we could crank the input of land runoff nutrients down to near zero, significant amounts of nutrients would continue to reach the Lake from air pollution, drifting over the Lake and gliding down into its waters on dust particles, and in rain drops and snowflakes.

We have been adamant about "drawing a line in the sand," or perhaps "a line in the decomposed granite," and we are spending a great deal on watershed restoration, but we have fallen short of looking at the problem as a whole and applying available resources rationally.

Shear pain and sacrifice are not a good measure of how well we are managing the Lake. We need to think more strategically and focus on efforts that really affect the Lake, not on things that just complicate our lives.

The goal is keep the uniquely transparent waters of Tahoe clear. The goal is not, and should not be, to make Tahoe a more exclusive resort. "Keep Tahoe Blue" means the water, not the blood of visitors and residents.