A South Lake Tahoe man is suing the California Tahoe Conservancy (CTC) after his home was filled with water for 80 days this past winter. Damian Sowers, a lifelong local who lives on El Dorado Avenue, can now only visit the home his parents built 60 years ago. The house was filled with 16″ of water that came in from the Upper Truckee River during the heavy 2022-23 winter. The CTC started a restoration project in the Upper Truckee River Marsh in 2020 to correct old grazing and farming methods that straightened the river to have a drier meadow. The two-year-long project brought back water to the meadow, creating a healthier environment. Sowers said he believes in the project and is a proponent of the restoration, but he says the way it was done with check dams was ill-conceived and the project’s floodplain alterations were miscalculated by more than an order of magnitude.