SACRAMENTO (AP) -- The University of California, Davis, and Sierra Nevada College said Wednesday they will build a $24 million environmental research and education center at Lake Tahoe.

The Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences will be built at the college's campus in Incline Village, Nev., in cooperation with the Desert Research Institute and the RAND Corp.

Backers said they intend the center to become an international leader for science and teaching on the preservation of alpine lakes and their watersheds.

It will combine offices and laboratories for the UC Davis Tahoe Research Group and the Desert Research Institute, offices; laboratories and classrooms for Sierra Nevada College students; and conference space for 300 people. Exhibits and educational programs will be housed in the Thomas J. Long Foundation Education Center.

The project, a decade in the planning, will rely on what backers said is an unusual cooperation between public and private institutions in two states, the federal and state governments, and $13 million in private and foundation funding.

Construction could begin in the summer of 2005 if the plan wins approval in May from the Sierra Nevada College Board of Trustees and in June from the University of California Regents.

"In this one place, we will be able to conduct the research needed to keep the lake healthy and blue, educate the next generation of Tahoe scientists, teach our children about the basin's natural resources, and inform the public officials who decide the basin's future," said Charles Goldman, a UC Davis scientist who has led Tahoe studies for 44 years.

The university quoted Goldman as saying he and his researchers have been "doing world-class research in a Third World facility," a crowded, leaky, unheated former fish hatchery near Tahoe City. The researchers are leading a $6 million study to develop new Lake Tahoe water pollution standards by 2007.

Sierra Nevada College President Ben Solomon said the new facility will incorporate the environmentally friendly building practices the campus sees as one of it's hallmarks since the 300-student private college began in 1969.

The Desert Research Institute is an environmental research program operated by the University and Community College System of Nevada, and currently has campuses in Reno and Las Vegas.