Snowbowl manager slams Sierra Club

By Cindy Yurth
Navajo Times, October 11, 2007

FLAGSTAFF – Arizona Snowbowl General Manager J.R. Murray released a written response this week to the Sierra Club’s listing of the San Francisco Peaks as one of the country’s most threatened places, and criticized the club for opposing the ski area’s expansion plans.

“It is hypocritical for the Sierra Club to oppose the ski area upgrade when they were silent when the Hualapai Tribe built a skybridge on the rim of the Grand Canyon,” Murray wrote in his response.

“The Snowbowl proposal went through a comprehensive (environmental impact statement) process whereas the skybridge was just built because it is on tribal land,” he stated.

The club, along with 13 Native American tribes, sued the Snowbowl to prevent it fro using treated wastewater from the city of Flagstaff to make snow, saying the action would violate the sanctity of the mountain.

The peak, known as Dook’o’oosliid in Navajo, is one of the Navajos’ four sacred peaks marking the boundaries of the tribe’s homeland. The mountain is also sacred to the Hopi, the Apache and other tribes.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals this year overturned a lower court decision and ordered the Snowbowl to suspend its plans, but a Flagstaff-based group called Reclaim the Peaks is raising money to appeal that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In its report on threatened public lands, the Sierra Club maintains that if Snowbowl supporters are successful in their appeal, the use of wastewater and also the logging of additional land for proposed new ski runs will play havoc with the mountain’s ecosystem.

In his statement, Murray counters that the expansion would take place within the resort’s existing footprint, and noted that the ski area occupies only 1 percent of the mountain’s terrain.

“Anyone can see that if 99 percent of the land is set aside as a wilderness or undeveloped public land, that the protection is already in place,” he notes in the release.

He also disputes Sierra Club’s contention that snow made from treated wastewater may cause health problems if people ingest it.

“The same reclaimed water is being used throughout the United States, State of Arizona, and specifically in Flagstaff,” he writes. “The EPA and ADEQ, regulatory agencies charged with approving such uses, have approved the use of reclaimed water for snowmaking, just as they have for discharge in Flagstaff into the Rio de Flag, which is near a city well field.”

Murray also contends that some of the Sierra Club’s own members will be adversely affected if the expansion doesn’t go through.

“The Sierra Club has many diverse members, many are skiers and even passholders at Snowbowl,” he writes. “Any attempt to thwart the plans to make man-made snow is a plan to close the ski area which would not be in the best interest of the general public, including many Sierra Club members.”

Snowbowl operators have said that unless they can make artificial snow to compensate for the region’s erratic snowfall, they may not be able to continue operating.


        


Reprinted as an historical reference document under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html