Building Bans Win More Fans

The federal government's right to temporarily halt construction in order to examine and determine development regulations was strengthened Thursday when an appeals panel in San Francisco over-ruled a Nevada district judge's finding that the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency had taken private property from over 450 Tahoe landowners by implementing a building ban from 1981-1984 and owed the landowners compensation. The decision is viewed as a major victory by federal regulatory agencies and is expected to aid in an additional case being brought before the court by the landowner's association, the Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, which objects to the federal planning regulations adopted by the agency in 1987. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was created in 1969 to control pollution of the famous lake.