The Flagstaff City Council votes to allow Snowbowl to buy reclaimed water

By Lisa Rayner
Tea Party Publisher

On March 19, the Flagstaff City Council voted unanimously to allow the Arizona Snowbowl ski area to buy the city’s reclaimed wastewater.  Snowbowl management hopes to use the water to make artificial snow. The vote approved the sale of 1.5 million gallons of reclaimed water per day from November through February of each year. The city produces 6 million gallons of reclaimed water per day. The vote was a reaffirmation of the City Water Commission’s February vote to recommend the sale of reclaimed water to Snowbowl.

Now that Snowbowl has an assurance from the city that it would be able to buy reclaimed water for snowmaking, a National Environmental Policy Act process can begin that will examine in detail the potential environmental, social and cultural effects of the proposal. The process will take 2 to 3 years and involve extensive public comment periods.

Meanwhile, the city attorney has drafted a written agreement to sell reclaimed water to Snowbowl. The draft is based on the city’s standard reclaimed water agreement used with other reclaimed water customers, most of whom use the water on grass and plants during the summer. The agreement does not specify how much the city would charge for the water. However, City Utilities Director Ron Doba said that the city would likely apply the existing city water rate structure to the proposed sale. The water would probably be sold at the off-peak rate of $1 per thousand gallons for the first 50 million gallons, and 80 cents per thousand gallons for the next 50 million gallons. The price goes down as the amount of water used goes up.

The city currently sells reclaimed water to homeowners and businesses for landscape irrigation. Much of the reclaimed water is also discharged into the Rio de Flag streambed, where it recharges the regional aquifer beneath the Continental area in east Flagstaff.  }

Doba explained to the City Council that the city’s reclaimed water is rated “Class A+” by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the highest quality of reclaimed water possible. The Class A+ rating is due to the fact that the Rio de Flag plant removes nitrogen and other nutrients from incoming wastewater. Such nutrients can upset the balance of ecosystems when they accumulate in water or soil in large quantities. ADEQ requires snowmaking to use at least Class A reclaimed water.

Nearly all the councilmembers said that the vote should be made strictly on the question of whether or not the city should sell reclaimed water to Snowbowl.

“There is only one question for the City Council, and that's whether we should supply the water to Snowbowl. All the other issues that are very important — the spiritual nature of the mountain, the economics, the environmental impacts — that belongs to the NEPA process. That's in my mind out of our jurisdiction. We can only vote on (issues within) the city,” said Penny Trovillion.

The Council’s vote followed two nights of contentious community discussion concerning Snowbowl’s snowmaking proposal. There was an overflowing crowd at the March 18 City Council work session and a full house during the following night’s regular Council meeting.

The Council received nearly 90 written or spoken comments, with twice as many in favor of the proposal, and more than 100 e-mails, 10:1 in favor of snowmaking.

A number of people connected to the tourism industry advocated for the snowmaking proposal by citing the recreational and economic value of skiing to the local economy. Tribal and environmental activists advocated against the proposal, calling it ecologically unsustainable and disrespectful of Native American religious beliefs about the San Francisco Peaks.

The Arizona Snowbowl ski area operates under a special use permit from the U.S. Forest Service. The permit involves 777 acres of the Coconino National Forest on the western slope of the San Francisco Peaks. Snowbowl  is 10 years into a 40-year permit period.

Speaking before the Council March 19, Snowbowl General Manager J.R. Murray hoped to keep the discussion focused. “We are asking the city to simply enter into an agreement to allocate this water so we can initiate the formal NEPA process,” said Murray. “Tonight is not the night to begin the NEPA process.

“Using reclaimed water for skiing is being done throughout the country. It is, however, not being used exclusively for snowmaking. We would become the first. It is leading edge. It is proactive. It is environmentally sound. And there are a lot of communities interested in how this turns out for us. We’ve received phone calls every week, because this is the wave of the future,” said Murray.

Snowbowl General Partner Eric Borowski, part owner of Snowbowl, said that when his investment company first considered buying the ski area, it reviewed the past 40 years of Snowbowl ski season records to analyze the investment risk.

“How often do you have a bad year?” the investors asked, recalled Borowski. “And that turned out to be one out of four. And really, the good thing was, there was never … two bad years in a row. Well, that was until the 1998-99 season and 1999-2000 season. We had two consecutive bad years. And to top it off, we have this year. …  We’d opened for four days (in December), and had a total of 2,857 skiers. Our normal (skier count) is 125,000, and the range has been up to 180,000. … We bought the Snowbowl in 1992, at the peak, the highest year as far as skier count, and we thought that this was really going to be an easy business.”

“Obviously,” continued Borowski, “no business can survive with these kinds of oscillations. It’s too unpredictable. … Snowmaking (is) the only solution. It will eliminate those wild oscillations. We’ll still have oscillations, because obviously when we have really good snow on top of all our base of snow amendments, we’ll have more skiers … (but the skier count difference) would be measured in single digit percentages.”

In addition, said Borowski, “Snowmaking is not ‘alternative.’ If there was no water, (if) the technology didn’t exist, after looking back at three out of four bad years, with the fourth year, this year, being the worst in history, … we’d close the Snowbowl.”

Murray said, “I’m the manager of a business that doesn’t know if it’s coming or going. We need a sustainable business. Buying a season pass should not be a gamble. It’s not at over 89 percent of the rest of the ski areas in the country. We can’t make commitments to staff. We don’t know when to hire, we don’t know when to train. And the city’s marketing plan for winter is a lot like ours: ‘Wait for snow, answer phone. If no snow, phone don’t ring.’ We are not just a ski area, but skiing pays the bills. Our sky ride, the banquets, the weddings, all the other things we’re known for help retain our year-round staff. But it’s the skiing that pays the bills. … We’re not a Big Box. We’re not a chain. We’re not a casino. We do not have smokestacks, and we do not pollute. We do provide thousands of lasting experiences.”

Borowski stressed that Snowbowl must make artificial snow to make up for the lack of adequate natural snowfall if it is to stay in business. “It’s kind of obvious to the most casual observer that weather patterns have changed,” said Borowski. “Why can’t we continue to rely on natural snowfall? … It’s (no longer) one bad year out of four; it’s now three out of four. You could do it, but you’d have to have no year-round employees; you’d have to have no health insurance for your employees; you’d have to have no affordable retirement benefits as we have for our employees; you’d have to make no capital improvements. Business would simply be, wait for it to snow and then scramble to hire employees.”

Borowski discounted claims that Snowbowl might expand if allowed to use artificial snow. “We are surrounded on three sides by wilderness. We have no desire to expand the ski area outside the wilderness. First of all, even if we had a desire, it takes an act of Congress, and we’re not about to fight that fight. It’s impossible. So what you have up there in the 777 acres is as big as the Snowbowl’s apparently going to get. … We have no desire for condos or hotel development. Flagstaff as we all know has more than enough hotel rooms, especially in the wintertime. And so, the proposal that we will take to the Forest Service at this time is the need. There is no more room up there for additional runs. The terrain doesn’t lend itself to it, and you can’t go outside the permitted boundaries.”

However, several years ago, Snowbowl management did propose an expansion of ski runs within the permit area.

While Murray and Borowski cited a changing climate in support of the need for artificial snowmaking, some others in the audience who spoke to the City Council used changing weather patterns as evidence that snowmaking would be environmentally unsustainable.

“I’d like to bring up some uncomfortable facts,” said local Sierra Club organizer Andy Bessler. “We are experiencing one of the warmest winters on record. The Sierra Club knows that global warming is a reality. We’re living in a different world now. I think this debate 10 years ago would have been easier, but as the city taps new, deeper wells for our drinking water, and there is no snow on the mountain, literally, except for today, we have to realize that we may (in the future) be using that reclaimed water for other things such as drinking. We may be experiencing dry wells. Our aquifers are being depleted.”

Former City Councilmember Norm Wallen said March 19, “We currently view our wastewater as excess. I think that is a mistake. We should be pumping that wastewater back into the ground. ... We have been mining our groundwater. ... There are many geologists and others who think that we are mining it all over the city. … It's only a matter of time before public acceptance allows us to put this treated wastewater in with our regular water.”

Furthermore, said Wallen, “There are many things that the Forest Service Environmental Impact Statement will not consider, including ... future uses the city might have for this wastewater.”

Environmentalists have also pointed out that if most city household and businesses reused their tap water (gray water) for landscaping and switched to composting toilets, there would be very little reclaimed water available for sale. Furthermore, while the city’s reclaimed water is of the highest quality, as far as wastewater goes, members of the 13 regional Native American tribes that hold the San Francisco Peaks sacred say that artificial snowmaking, especially snow made from wastewater, would be a spiritual desecration to both the mountain and Native religious beliefs and practices.

Berta Benally, a local restaurant owner, asked that the city not allow the mountain to be desecrated with wastewater. Benally indicated her restaurant is only open part of the year.

Hunter Red Day said, “I represent spiritualism and the indigenous people.” There is no snow because humans living in this area are out of balance with the Earth, said Red day. He asked, “What is more important — making money or maintaining a connection to the Earth?”

Hazel James pointed out that traditional native peoples in the region have always had small populations because they do not want to harm the Peaks. James believes that the snowmaking proposal is a form of environmental racism and an affront to the land.

But some were skeptical of the Native American views voiced to the Council. Margaret Novak, who is white, said she and her husband own a convenience store on South Milton Road in west Flagstaff. She said that her business is down 30 percent this winter. Novak believes that if Native tribes owned the San Francisco Peaks and the ski area, there would already be artificial snowmaking on the Peaks, as well as other profitable developments such as a casino.

However, Navajo activist Sammy James said, “I don’t believe in altering ecology by making artificial snow. All my elders are against it.”

A number of local business owners spoke. Most said that good skier counts at the Snowbowl are crucial to the economic solvency of Flagstaff.

Downtown attorney Fritz Aspy said, “All you have to do is walk through our downtown and see all the stores that have closed down this year and you begin to get a feel for the impact that this type of winter has had on our economy.”

Local writer and activist Mary Sojourner countered that while she “hears the pain” of local business owners, she wonders how many skiers actually shop at locally owned businesses rather than corporate chain sporting goods stores, hotels and restaurants. Sojourner also said that Snowbowl is not a local business, pointing out that while Snowbowl co-owner Borowski has a second home in Flagstaff, his office is in Scottsdale. In addition, downtown business closures have been mainly due to high rents, said Sojourner.

Ash Patel, president of the Flagstaff Innkeepers Association, said that tourism is one of the largest employers in Flagstaff. City tax dollars generated by bars, restaurants and hotels have been dismal this season, said Patel. He strongly supports artificial snowmaking.

However, Wallen noted that, “Despite the fact that this has been a horrible snow year, and we were in a recession that began long before September, (the) BBB (tax) is down less than 1 percent.”

Gary Valen, who has a local business conducting visitor surveys, said that in the last 10 years there have been 1,258,000 “users” of Snowbowl. Of those, 76 percent are of out-of-towners. Thirty-three percent of those visitors spend at least one night in a Flagstaff hotel room. Valen says this visitation has had a $49 million impact on local hotels and restaurants in the last 10 years, not counting ski-related revenues generated in other parts of the local economy, such as at grocery stores, sporting goods stores, and other entertainment spending not directly related to skiing.

“Snowmaking will allow … guests from out of town a longer lead time for decision making for reservations, planning vacations, things like that. That is something we currently do not have.”

Murray said, “We have thousands of people statewide who are waiting to hear about our progress. They want to come to Flagstaff, but they cannot, because of the inconsistency. And I think we saw that last week with spring break. Not only did we not see our 7,600 out-of-town skiers come to Snowbowl, but we had thousands leave, because we didn’t have any skiing.”

Other supporters of the snowmaking proposal include the Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Flagstaff Economic Council and the Northern Chapter of the Arizona Restaurant Association.

Environmentalists in turn contended that commercial skiing on a desert mountain is by nature an unstable business, especially in an era of global warming. They said that the city should refocus its economic development efforts on ecologically sustainable proposals, rather than continuing to prop up an unsustainable and ultimately failing industry.

Environmentalists are also concerned about the effects that the lights and noise made by snowmaking equipment will have on wildlife.

Artificial snow must be made when the temperatures permit the process, usually at night. Snowbowl is in discussion with the Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition about the possible effects of lighting.

Commentators disagreed over whether the artificial snow would have a positive or negative effect on wildlife.

Bill Watt said that additional water on the Peaks might support additional wildlife. Watt recently retired from the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and has recently worked as a Snowcat operator grooming the slopes at Snowbowl. 

Environmentalists also pointed out that the recent climate shift is likely due to the overuse of fossil fuels and that burning more fossil fuel to pump water uphill and make snow seems counterproductive.

Other speakers commented on the recreational and school sports opportunities provided by skiing at Snowbowl.

However, environmentalists pointed out that there are many bioregionally appropriate recreational and professional sports possibilities besides skiing.

Ken Lane, owner of Absolute Bikes, said that he is an avid skier and environmentalist who is opposed to snowmaking. He pointed out that artificial snow would not be used on upper level, advanced runs. Phoenicians will not flock to Snowbowl for artificial snow on beginner runs, said Lane.

Local archeologist and former ski guide Angie Krall said that human-made snow is dangerous to ski on and that it requires a layer of natural snow on top to be skiable. Krall said that artificial snow is more dangerous than ice and that skiers must avoid exposed artificial snow deposits. Krall also pointed out that as an archeologist, she was familiar with tree ring climate data indicating that there have been 50-year droughts in Flagstaff’s past.

Flagstaff is overdeveloped. We need to pull back and reconsider where we are headed, said Flagstaff Activist Network member Michael Wolcott

What is NEPA?

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 requires public disclosure of the environmental consequences of implementing a management action.

NEPA Sec. 101 [42 USC § 4331] says that Congress recognizes “the profound impact of man’s activity on the interrelations of all components of the natural environment, particularly the profound influences of population growth, high-density urbanization, industrial expansion, resource exploitation, and new and expanding technological advances and (recognizes) further the critical importance of restoring and maintaining environmental quality to the overall welfare and development of man.”

The preservation of important historic, cultural, and natural aspects of our national heritage is included.

Federal agencies must follow the following NEPA process:

Scoping — Informing the public and other agencies of the purpose and need for taking action, and action proposed to address the need. The public must be asked to comment.

Issue Identification — The project team identifies significant issues (legitimate conflicts with the proposed action). To do this, they use the comments they’ve received, as well as their professional knowledge.

Development of Alternatives — The team develops alternatives to the proposed action that are designed to resolve the significant issues.

Analysis of Environmental Consequences — The team analyzes what would happen to the environment (biological, physical and social) with implementation of the proposed action, as well as each alternative.

Significance of Impacts — The team determines the significance of the impacts and prepares the appropriate NEPA document (environmental assessment for impacts that are not significant, environmental impact statement for impacts that are significant). The public will be formally asked to comment again on the document.

Decision — The deciding officer decides what action to take.

In addition, Executive Order 13007, “Indian Sacred Sites,” ensures that Federal agencies are responsive to the concerns of American Indian tribes about access to sacred sites by tribal religious practitioners and the physical protection of such sites. Federal agencies must accommodate access to and ceremonial use of Indian sacred sites by Indian religious practitioners, avoid adverse effect on the physical integrity of such sacred sites, provide notice to Indian tribes of actions potentially affecting sacred sites or access to them, in a manner that respects the sovereignty of Indian tribal governments.

Public participation must also include “individuals and organizations with an economic, cultural, social, or environmental ‘stake’ in the action: state, local, and tribal governments; Federal agencies with jurisdiction by law or expertise; civic and environmental organizations; interested or affected private citizens; and communications media.”

NEPAnet: http://ceq.eh.doe.gov/nepa/nepanet.htm.