Ashland, OR – The planned expansion at Oregon’s Mt. Ashland ski area, first approved by the U.S. Forest Service in 2004 and the subject of numerous lawsuits and appeals in recent years, is now being contested by new litigation filed by environmental groups on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Medford.

Plaintiffs the Sierra Club, Oregon Wild and the Center for Biological Diversity are seeking a new injunction to block construction only four months after a judge lifted a previous injunction. The new lawsuit alleges that environmental reviews failed to adequately consider the effects of the expansion upon Ashland’s watershed, the impacts of forest thinning upon wildfire fuels, new state limits on sediment that can enter one of the watershed’s reservoirs, and the effects of global warming. In addition to most of these issues, previous legal challenges cited the expansion’s economic feasibility and its impact on the habitat of the Pacific fisher, a relative of the mink not listed as rare or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The plaintiffs in this new legal effort take issue with the aspect of the $3.5 million expansion plan that calls for two new chairlifts and 71 acres of new largely novice and intermediate runs in Middle Fork in the western portion of the nonprofit ski area’s Special Use Permit area. If built, the ski area’s overall vertical drop would increase from 1,150 feet to approximately 1,700 feet. Construction on the expansion plan has yet to begin, and efforts to fund the expansion through contributions to the ski area have not yet started.