McClatchy Washington Bureau

Scientists who for decades reported the famously clear Lake Tahoe to be turning ever murkier have discovered that the decline actually has been leveling since 2001.

Using a new, more sophisticated computer analysis of environmental data on Tahoe, the researchers also found that the shift was not weather-related but more likely the payoff from years of costly and contentious building restrictions to curb polluted runoff into the lake.

"It's a good hypothesis that the land use restrictions and erosion controls have something to do with it," said John Reuter, a lake scientist with the University of California, Davis, Tahoe Environmental Research Center.

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