Flagstaff, AZ – The Flagstaff City Council voted Thursday 5-2 against selling culinary water to Arizona Snowbowl for snowmaking, opting instead to stick to the original plan using treated wastewater that has caused controversy amongst Native American tribes that consider the San Francisco Peaks sacred.nSnowmaking at Snowbowl, however, is unlikely to occur anytime soon as a lawsuit filed by the tribes remains pending. The plaintiffs in that litigation allege that the U.S. Forest Service failed to adequately consider the health risks posed by ingesting snow made with treated wastewater.

Hundreds of people nearly filled the Sinagua Middle School auditorium in Flagstaff Monday night for public comment before the City Council, with the ski area and local business owners expressing support for using culinary water and local Native American tribes and several environmentalists expressing opposition. Indicating that they didn’t wish to vote in the early morning hours of Tuesday, the Council adjourned its meeting shortly before midnight, promising to vote later in the week. That vote occurred today.

Ski area owners have been fighting for years to finally install snowmaking at the ski area, which experiences vast volatility in annual natural snowfall. Snowbowl owner Eric Borowsky asserts that the ski area needs snowmaking to ensure its economic viability.

Arizona Snowbowl operates on U.S. Forest Service (USFS) land in the Coconino National Forest northwest of Flagstaff. Environmentalists and Native Americans took the USFS to federal court in 2006 over the ski area’s expansion plans to use reclaimed water for snowmaking, with Native Americans arguing that the land in Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks was sacred in their culture and that spraying treated wastewater on the mountain represented an affront to their traditions. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in favor of the ski area and the Forest Service, and in June 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reconsider the case. The tribes subsequently filed the pending civil lawsuit, alleging that the wastewater plan poses a public health risk.

Since then rejection of the initial case by the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) worked with both sides to strike a compromise using culinary water even as the new lawsuit proceeded. Then last May, for the first time several of the tribes involved in the discussions expressed their opposition to snowmaking at the ski area in any form. In fact, Navajo Nation president Joe Shirley at the time indicated that his tribe’s ultimate solution would be to end skiing at Snowbowl altogether. As a result, Shirley has sought federal money to buy the ski area. Borowsky has proposed a price of $47 million in the event that snowmaking is disallowed.

The culinary plan would have cost an estimated $11 million more to implement than the treated wastewater plan. The USDA has promised a federal grant to offset the cost increase.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a construction permit for a pipeline to carry the culinary water from Flagstaff to the ski area. However, that plan still required the approval of the Flagstaff City Council, which was voted down today.

The city of Flagstaff stood to earn approximately $100,000 per year by selling culinary water to Snowbowl, according to city utility officials who spoke before the Council Monday night.