Snow Job: Tahoe Bursting at the Seams

Ski country all a-flurry over where to store the snow

There's a heated battle under way over snow in Northern California's prime ski region. But the issue isn't lack of or how to make the white stuff for the Lake Tahoe resorts. This problem, our friends at KCRA say, is quite the opposite -- too much snow.

Tourism officials say they haven't seen this much snow in almost a decade. About eight feet of it piled up in Placer County in just a week and now workers don't know where to put it when they plow it.

The Public Utilities Commission is being blamed for the lack of space because they sold a parcel of land across from the facility that had been used to store the snow for the last eight years.

But at an emergency meeting over the issue, the commission defended their decision, saying they didn't have the space to keep all of it anyway. They've already been looking into alternate sites and have several places in mind to store the snow.

Some may say a simple fix is right in their back yard: Lake Tahoe. Why not just dump it there? Not so fast. The snow is littered with pollution, which would put the lake in peril.

The resorts are happy to have such a problem. After all, in a region that profits from what falls from the sky, snow means money.

A decision on where to store the snow is expected this week -- they better decide soon because the next snowfall is just around the corner.

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