Who would want human waste as snow on the ski resort?!?

Question

Because its happeneing in a place calle Flagstaff Arizona and its now in the courts, because the government wants it. Its crazy, people are protesting but we need more people to help us to try and stop this from happening, the precautions are high, but no one really believes it. The ski resort is on the San Francisco Peaks, its ganna smell the forestry area. The nature around it will not be the same beautiful place as it was. Tere is a website alled sve the peak. org.

Answer 1

Perhaps the problem isn't solely in the fact that the resort wants to make snow. The problem is in the fact that the water source is from untreated household wastewater.

Now, you don't need a degree in civil engineering to understand that the reason the water is contaminated in the first place is from overpopulation. Arizona wasn't designed to hold the amount of people living there already. Like Tuscon and Phoenix (and many other cities in the southwest), Flagstaff is a sprawling area. I haven't been in Flagstaff in over a decade, but if it like the other cities, the rate of population growth has long surpassed the amounts of potable water and the treatment facilities have most likely not kept up with the need.

Having said that, using untreated water for snowmaking could actually serve as a means to clean the water and return it to the watershed in a less-polluted form. Water treatment plants typically use aeration as a means to treat water. Having 100 snowguns aerate several hundred thousand gallons of water per day would be one means to help filter out some of the pollutants. Similarly, all of that snow would then melt and gradually be cleaned by the soil and return to the aquifer in a relatively clean form. I don't necessarily believe this is the best course of action, but from a scientific standpoint the water would be cleaner after it was used for snowmaking than if it would be allowed to sit in a treatment facility waiting to be cleaned.

In general, man-made snow is full of contaminents. E-coli and Giardia top the list. Most resorts use water from reservoirs that contain those, and other biological pollutants. (I know for a fact beavers live in the pond we draw most of out water from. Likewise, I've hiked around the reservoirs at many of the bigger VT resorts...those too serve as habitat areas for dozens of aquatic mammals, reptiles, and birds.) In frozen form, the pollutants are relatively stable and unless you eat the snow, the chances of you getting sick are slim. There is also no odor as the snow is spread out. Treatment plants and septic systems smell because there is a large concentration of gas from decaying matter. On a ski slope, you don't have an area for this gas to accumulate. Solar radiation will kill a good part of the microrganisms and many will be disperssed into the watershed during melt-off at a ppm concentration that is acceptable for EPA standards...if you choose to accept EPA standards.

As for the socio-political problems with it being sacred land for the local tribes...well, I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole.