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Chief Administrative Officer recommending the Board approve and authorize the Chair to sign a letter to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency in support of the South Tahoe Refuse Wood Energy Pilot Project.
FUNDING: N/A
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DISCUSSION / BACKGROUND
South Tahoe Refuse (STR) owns and operates the Material and Resource Recovery Facilities located in the City of South Lake Tahoe. STR provides residential and commercial waste collection services to the City of South Lake Tahoe, the unincorporated portion of El Dorado County in the South Lake Tahoe Basin, and Douglas County, Nevada. Wood waste brought to STR's Resource Recovery Facility is consolidated and trucked seventy miles roundtrip to a Carson Valley composting facility. STR has partnered with Wisewood Energy to develop a small-scale wood-waste-to-energy project to be located at STR's existing facility that will utilize wood waste already being brought to the facility, thereby reducing the export of this material to Carson Valley, Nevada.
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), the nation's first bi-state regional planning agency, was established in 1969 by the U.S. Congress for the purpose of protecting the natural resources of the Lake Tahoe Basin. TRPA consists of counties that border Lake Tahoe in both California and Nevada. TRPA is an additional land-use permitting authority, above and beyond the respective permitting agencies within each member county and has its own Ordinance Code. Currently, the TRPA Ordinance Code has suspended the acceptance of biomass-to-energy project applications. STR is seeking TRPA's approval to accept an application for a small-scale wood-waste-to-energy pilot project.
STR is requesting the Board of Supervisors’ support of its request to TRPA to accept the submittal of a wood energy pilot project application. The benefits of STR's proposed pilot project include, but are not limited to, the utilization of wood waste already being brought to STR's Resource Recovery Facili...
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