South Lake Tahoe, CA – The Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition (SACC), a consortium of various environmental groups that includes the Sierra Nevada Alliance and Rocky Mountain Wild, has released its annual Ski Area Report Card that grades resorts on their environmental initiatives.
The 11th annual Report Card heavily penalizes the 32% of ski resorts throughout the western United States that plan to or are in the process of expanding into new terrain, leading to lower grades for environmental performance.
“Nearly one-third of all western ski resorts surveyed (27 out of 84) expanded their buildings, ski runs, or associated facilities, and most of those expansions intruded into public lands with long-term impacts on wildlife habitat and the region’s water resources,” report authors indicate. “This is a 300% increase in the number of resorts expanding compared to last year when only six resorts expanded their footprints. While the Ski Area Scorecard grades resorts on a variety of criteria, significant intrusion into new territory generally leads to a lower score, while expansion onto existing disturbed areas does not.”
“Not all resort expansions are the same,” noted Gavin Feiger of the Sierra Nevada Alliance, which compiled the data for the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition. “Some resorts significantly expand their facilities in an environmentally friendly way, such as placing new buildings on old parking lots.”
Utah’s Brighton Ski Resort, for example, expanded their facilities within their existing footprint and ended with a better numerical score this year than last, although their overall letter grade remained a “C.” Colorado’s Monarch Mountain, by contrast, made this year’s list of the worst in the eyes of report authors by proposing to expand their lift-served terrain onto 120 new acres, dropping their grade from last year’s “B” to a “D” this year.
The SACC rated Park City Mountain Resort the highest, awarding the Utah ski area an “A” in all four categories of Habitat Protection, Protecting Watersheds, Addressing Global Climate Change and Environmental Policies and Practices. The group’s “top ten” was rounded out by: Stevens Pass, Wash.; China Peak, Calif.; Sugar Bowl, Calif.; Deer Valley, Utah; Aspen Highlands, Colo.; Aspen Mountain, Colo.; Alpine Meadows, Calif.; and Canyons Resort, Utah. All earned an “A” overall.
By contrast, perhaps not surprisingly Arizona Snowbowl earned the dubious distinction of the worst overall score assessed by the SACC, a “D,” with an “F” in the categories of Addressing Global Climate Change, which includes the subcategory “Conserving energy by avoiding new snowmaking,” and Environmental Policies and Practices. Snowbowl last year won a decade-plus legal battle with Native American tribes for the right to install snowmaking using treated wastewater, which resort owners assert is essential for the resort’s survival. The battle reached all the way to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco before the tribes finally exhausted their legal avenues to stop the project. The group’s “Worst Ten” is rounded out by: Breckenridge, Colo.; Mount Spokane, Wash.; Steamboat, Colo.; Monarch, Colo.; Eldora, Colo.; Bear Mountain, Calif.; Snow Summit, Calif.; Solitude, Utah; and Homewood, Calif. All scored a “D” but Homewood, which garnered a “C”, and virtually all on the “Worst Ten” have expansion or improvement projects in progress or in the permitting process.
Most ski resort officials dismiss the report and its findings, and decline to participate in annual information collection efforts by the SACC. Most data is therefore accumulated by the group from websites and public documents. The Lakewood, Colo.-based National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) focuses instead on environmental sustainability efforts undertaken by its member resorts and annually issues a “Sustainable Slopes” report to quantify those efforts.
“In total, more than 190 resorts have endorsed the Environmental Charter over the past 12 years, representing over 75 percent of the ski resorts nationally by skier visits,” the NSAA wrote in its last Sustainable Slopes report issued this past September. “Upon endorsing the Charter, these resorts have identified an environmental contact person, assessed their policies and operations against the Environmental Principles in the Charter, and have taken steps toward improved environmental performance. Given variances in size, technical expertise, financial resources, and geographic location, resorts are at different points with respect to their environmental programs and implementation of the Environmental Principles but all are making efforts that are meaningful.”
In 2012 the NSAA issued a “Climate Challenge” and eight resorts — Alta Ski Area (Utah), Arapahoe Basin (Colo.), Canyons Resort (Utah), Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (Wyo.), Jiminy Peak (Mass.), Mount Hood Meadows (Ore.), Park City Mountain Resort (Utah) and Telluride (Colo.) — chose to participate, “pav(ing) the way for other resorts to inventory, target and reduce their carbon footprints,” the NSAA said in its report. Those same resorts, with the exception of Jiminy Peak which the SACC did not score, earned grades in the Ski Area Report Card that ranged from an “A” at Park City Mountain Resort to a “B” at Mount Hood Meadows.
Oddly, Utah’s Canyons Resort earned an overall “A” from the SACC, including an “A” in Habitat Protection, and neighboring Solitude Mountain Resort earned a “D” overall, even though the two resorts have jointly proposed the SkiLink gondola to connect the two through new terrain that is hotly contested by local environmental groups.
The SACC only scored ski resorts in the western U.S. states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. It did not address ski resorts elsewhere in the Continental U.S., Alaska or Canada.