About the Project

The 850-acre Bijou Park Creek Watershed is a large watershed extending from Heavenly Mountain Resort down to Ski Run Marina. It is bounded on the west by Herbert Avenue and on the east by Bowers Avenue. The developed areas within the historic creek alignment including Bill Avenue, Shirley Avenue, Werner Salas Drive, Vanda Lee Avenue, Blackwood Road, Rockwood Drive, and Woodbine Road now experience significant amounts of flooding due to the extensive and uncontrolled development within a historic stream environment zone in the 1950s, prior to incorporation of the City or current day land use restrictions.

As a heavily urbanized watershed, urban runoff may contain nutrients and sediment from the upper watershed, residential and commercial properties, and runoff from roadways. Restoration and enhancement of the Bijou Park Creek Watershed has long been considered an important aspect of the Lake Tahoe Environmental Improvement Program, with the multi-objective desire to reduce urban pollutants and address long standing aquatic invasive species (AIS) issues in the Marina. Although the watershed was long-ago developed and includes a high concentration of residential and commercial properties, the City, the California Tahoe Conservancy, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), U.S. Forest Service and other local agencies and environmental groups have identified improvements to the watershed as a high priority. The watershed-scale project seeks to address water quality and flooding issues first in the in the Lower Bijou Park Creek area (Phase 1/Wholefoods), in order to provide treatment for runoff from roadways, commercial and residential areas in the lower watershed that historically discharged directly to the marina and Lake Tahoe. The second phase of the project is focused on the large upper watershed area that is subject to historic flooding, development impacts in SEZ areas, and water quality issues. The upper watershed project includes plans to restore SEZ and floodplain areas, provide drainage solutions to support future active transportation improvements focused on the Bijou Community School, and include distributed natural treatment systems to reduce sediment and nutrients loads in urban runoff that has the potential to impact Lake Tahoe.

 June 24th, 2020 Public Meeting Presentation (PDF)

Project Documents

• Public Review CEQA/Environmental Compliance Document:  Final CEQA Document
• Public Review CEQA/Environmental Compliance Document Appendix: Final CEQA Appendix

The CEQA Initial Study and Mitigated Negative Declaration have been filed with the OPR under SCH #2020090564

Based on the feedback from the June 24, 2020 virtual public meeting and input for regulatory agencies and public land managers, the City has developed DRAFT 30% Conceptual Plans and associated DRAFT Preliminary Design Report, available via the links below:
- 30% Conceptual Plans: 30% Conceptual Plans