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It Was A Snow Job Either Way
By J.D. O'Connor
April 02, 2007
By Craig Altschul
If there's any agreement in Arizona about the ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals prohibiting Flagstaff's Arizona Snowbowl from making artificial snow, it's that it was a snow job. It just depends on which side of the snow gun you are on. Today, there is no snowmaking on these enticing slopes, which makes for very iffy skiing and lousy economics in good or bad years.
The Circuit Court sided with Native American tribes who claimed the use of reclaimed water (er, effluent) to manufacture snow on Snow Bowl's San Francisco Peaks violates the tribes' (Navajo and Hopi) rights under the 1933 Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed by Congress.
The new Circuit Court ruling overturned a District Court decision last year that reaffirmed the public use doctrine on public (read: Forest Service) land. The District Court said that the tribes failed to present any "objective evidence that their exercises of religion will be impacted by Snowbowl upgrades, nor would snowmaking "substantially burden the tribes' exercise of religion."
The whole thing has sparked debate among skiers, media, tribe members, and anyone else with an opinion. The Arizona media has squared off with two sharply differing points of view:
"Good news is hard to find, especially in a nation beset with an idiotic war and scandalous administration," wrote Assistant Editorial Page Editor Billie Stanton in the Tucson Citizen. "But good news for Arizona's San Francisco Peaks rumbled out of San Francisco itself when the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of 13 Indian tribes and religion. The ruling is a victory for religious freedom, Indians, and the environment. Hear, hear."
Meanwhile, the big gorilla of the Grand Canyon State's newspapers, the Arizona Republic, thought Stanton's response to be a bunch of effluent. An editorial in the Republic called for the matter to be settled in the highest court of all. The newspaper urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Justice Department "to aggressively take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court."
The editorial points out that the tribes' lawyer called it "a precedent-setting case that will help protect sites that are sacred to tribes throughout the country." The possibility then exists that anywhere the tribes' deem "sacred" could stop development cold.
The Circuit Court ruling said the Forest Service had not properly investigated the possible effect of human ingestion of artificial snow made from reclaimed water.
Naturally, most who read this in The Industry Report understand that one should not digest yellow snow. However, the water that would be carried to ski area by pipeline meets all federal Environmental Protection Agency and Arizona Department of Environmental Quality standards for reclaimed water – the same H20 used to recharge Flagstaff's drinking water.
The footprint of the Snowbowl, the Republic points out, is miniscule. Its 777 acres represents only one percent of the Kachina Peaks Wilderness Area.
So, the debate rages on. The decision "happily quashed the appalling idea," wrote columnist Stanton, "that greed could trump religion." Whether it's "appalling" or "Supreme Court appealing" will probably be decided by public outcry.
What do you think?
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Comments
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Just give the tribes the casino rights and they'll be whistling a different tune. |
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Posted by: Robert Gonzalez | April 2, 2007 10:06 AM
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Not much of a surprise on any level. First, the decision was made by the 9th circuit - the most overturned appellate court in the US.
For another... well, gee. Those of us of (ahem) a certain age can remember when Killington proposed using highly-treated wastewater to make snow almost three decades ago. It was a PR disaster for Killington, and hypersanitary Americans have not grown any less perturbed about 'poo' in the interim. |
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Posted by: Skip King | April 2, 2007 10:15 AM
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Surely the date of this story is wrong. It should have been dated 1st April. |
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Posted by: Andrew Ramsey ASAA | April 2, 2007 04:07 PM
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This article is filled with total misinformation. Your facts are not correct.
1. This water does not recharge Flagstaff's drinking water. In fact this water is leaking into one of our wells and it is causing great concern for our water supply since this water has been proven to disrupt the endocrine system of animals who come in contact with the water.
2. The judge only ruled in favor of the tribes because they brought forth responsible legislation. The judge specifically said he would have not ruled in favor of the tribes if they were asking to remove the ski area or ban hiking and camping in the forests.
3. The Arizona Snowbowl made a secret deal with the ADEQ to make snowmaking with treated sewage effluent (the legal term for reclaimed water) legal in the state of arizona. There was no public input as mandated by Arizona law.
4. The only other states that have legalized wastewater snowmaking have done so to utilize a way to store liquified pig poop from factory farms in the winter. The company that Snowbowl and ADEQ use as their research for why to legalize snowmaking, called Snowfluent, never envisioned their pig poop sprayer to create skiable snow, and actually when asked would not recommend skiing on snow made with treated sewage effluent. |
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Posted by: Rudy Preston FAN | April 2, 2007 09:43 PM
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The use of sewage effluent at the Snowbowl near Flagstaff for making "snow" is but the tip of an iceberg on the discussion of sewage effluent. Conveniently the discussion is limited and chooses thus far to exclude an open full disclosure discussion on ALL the constituents in the sewage effluent and their long term affect upon public health. This is a case of what "we" don't know, can hurt us perhaps kill us. Why are "we" afraid of discovering the truth...? |
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Posted by: PAUL F. MILLER | April 3, 2007 08:47 AM
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We are going to need that water in just a few short years just to flush our toilets and for landscaping to keep even the native plants alive. It won't be long before it is too important a commodity to turn it into snow to play in. We should be planning the infrastructure for re-use in town instead or re-arguing whether we have the right to pee on sacred places. |
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Posted by: M. Mier | April 6, 2007 07:51 AM
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It's time the public understands that all water is reclaimed and we drink it every day. Some of the same people freaking out about snofluent are probably playing golf on a course that uses reclaimed water to irrigate the grass they play on every day. |
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Posted by: Erik Miller | May 3, 2007 06:53 AM
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