I tried skiing once. I didn’t fall down but I didn’t like it. I was seriously disappointed in myself. I had always believed I would love skiing.
But I did love the area where I wasn’t skiing: Banff and Lake Louise. So gorgeous I still have dreams about it.
Which is why I read the whole NYT piece by Leslie Macmillan about a skiing nightmare that became a lawsuit. Here’s the headline: “Resort’s snow won’t be pure this year; it’ll be sewage.” Yes, that’s right. A ski resort in Arizona has “expansion plans in the San Francisco Peaks that include clear-cutting 74 acres of forest and piping treated sewage effluent onto a mountain to make snow.”
Antagonists of the plan — OK’d early this year by a federal appeals court — say it’s an environmental disaster. Yet, “This coming ski season, the resort, Arizona Snowbowl, will become the first ski resort in the world to use 100 percent sewage effluent to make artificial snow.”
Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs [in the lawsuit against the resort]…worries about the impact on the delicate alpine tundra and to human health should skiers fall into the treated sewer-water snow and ingest it.”
This is so disgusting, you’d better mark Arizona Snowball down as a ski resort you will not be visiting, lest you fall down in their “snow,” no matter what discounts they’re offering. And just in case you need additional incentive, here’s a statement from Eric Borowsky, the owner of Arizona Snowball, who “declared that if the resort lost its legal bid to make snow, ‘radical group would achieve their ultimate goal of control of our nation’s resources.'” I guess we know whom Borowsky will be voting for.
Here’s the whole article: Arizona Ski Resort’s Sewage Plan Creates Uproar – NYTimes.com.