After a decade of legal battles, a ski resort in Northern
Arizona recently became the first in the world to make
artificial snow totally out of sewage effluent. On Dec. 24,
Arizona Snowbowl fired up its snow guns for the first time, and
to everyone’s surprise, the snow that blasted onto the mountain
was yellow. The discolored snow has sharpened an already fraught
conflict. Snowbowl’s manager, J. R. Murray, said the problem was
caused by rusty residue in the new snow-making equipment that
carries the wastewater from neighboring Flagstaff, where it is
piped directly from the town’s sewage treatment plant. But
Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity, a
conservation group, says something seems fishy. “I question
whether that explanation is based on tests of the water or
conjecture,” he said. ”Something’s awry, and the onus is on the
Forest Service and ADEQ to protect the public and determine the
cause.” (ADEQ is the acronym for the Arizona Department of
Environmental Quality.) As I have reported, e