environmentalists-does snowmaking hurt water quality or water flow?

[lax]

i was wondering if any of you guys knew of any useful sites concerning this

my school has a subscription to many databases so i should be all set, but i was just wondering if i was missing something really good...l

[watersnowdirt]

These guys will know - part of Colorado Wild is the Ski Area Citizens Coalition....
http://www.coloradowild.org/index.html

[powslut]

I know Parks Canada has quota's for how much water Lake Louise and Norquay can remove from their aquifers for snowmaking. In the past, especially following dry summers and autumns, they have severely limited or banned snowmaking for periods of time to allow the aquifers to recharge or to make sure that stream flows remain sufficient to not damage aquatic life.

[Greydon Clark]

In Colorado litigation was brought against a resort that wanted to take water from a polluted stream to make snow that ultimate would run-off into a non-polluted stream, lowering the streams water quality. I believe the resort was Keystone. Beyond that, do your own damn homework.

[Blurred]

In Colorado litigation was brought against a resort that wanted to take water from a polluted stream to make snow that ultimate would run-off into a non-polluted stream, lowering the streams water quality. I believe the resort was Keystone. Beyond that, do your own damn homework.

LOL. It snows on keystone, the water goes into the snake, flows to lake dillon. The tunnel bringing water to the front range goes right by keystone. They pump water out of it into the snake, the snake flows by keystone, they pump out of the snake and spread snow on keystone, when it melts it flows right back into the snake. It's been recycled for years.

[Foggy_Goggles]

Winter Park has had issues with this as well. They couldn't take water out of the Little Vasquez because it would ruin the cutthoat population. I also remember something about the water from the NF Fraser pollution the Vasquez.

[TeleAl]

Snowmaking requires water.
If the water is gathered from places where it will not return,
then that disrupts the flow of water.

Snow making often contains chemicals.
They are used to make snow at warmer temperatures for example.
And chemicals pollute.

Lower water tables affect eco systems in many ways, normally not good ones.
And polluted water is not good either.

Water=source of life.

[Lurch]

A Basin is mking snow from a water source that contains heavy metals from old mine tailings. When that snow melts it is flowing into basins that did not have a problem with heavy metals.

Back east all of the places that I know of have their own water holding ponds that they pull their snow making water from. Strict water laws in the west do not allow that sort of thing.

[Trackhead]

Arizona Snowbowl has been battling this issue for years at their resort. Check out their website, you can read all the environmental impact statements related to their specific issues.

[gorms]

A-Basin had issues with their recent installation of snowmaking. In a nut shell it was pulling water out of a relatively pristine arm of the Snake. the problem is that down stream there acid mine drainge (lowering pH and mobile heavy metals). the fear was that the water that was removed would not be available to dilute the acid and metals down stream near keystone.

This was the main issue delaying the permitting for the snow making. After a lot of studies i think they found that it didnt/wouldnt have a dramatic negative impact on the water quality. I think they appeased the forest service by doing some mitigation of tailing piles in montezuma and following a pretty regimented set of rule describing how much water (percentage of flow) and time of year they could withdraw. Google probably knows more than I do about it.

[Lone Star]

http://www.fseee.org/index.html?page...0101best.shtml

[random]

A friend of mine wrote a term paper on this last semester. In short, yes. Water flow…you have to get the water from somewhere, so you’re changing the natural flow… Redirecting natural flow changes plant diversity downstream…and added runoff in other areas which also changes diversity and causes increase in erosion. Of course, chemicals added to the water for snowmaking causes other problems, and changes nutrient acquisition capabilities of plants. Or at least I think that’s what she said; I forget some of the specifics. Truthfully, I wasn’t paying that much attention when people were presenting their findings in class. If you have any specific questions, let me know and I'll ask her. I remember her saying that there’s a ski hill in Australia that uses treated sewage for snowmaking because it causes less disturbance and then they don’t have to pay for it getting removed from the hill.

[maddog]

Making snow is like watering a golf course. Nothing good comes of it. Even the snow sucks!

[Ski Beaver]

I remember her saying that there’s a ski hill in Australia that uses treated sewage for snowmaking because it causes less disturbance and then they don’t have to pay for it getting removed from the hill.

That would explain why our seasons are so shit.

Can you please find out which resort this is done at.

[lax]

an vail frequenters?

specifically those that liek to eat the man-made snow?
"vail gets its water is 100 yards away from a sewage runout"


keystone is just fucked in general

done. its 5:38..good times...drinking its going to be sweet

[random]

That would explain why our seasons are so shit.

Can you please find out which resort this is done at.

FYI, Mount Buller Alpine Resort in Australia. They finished building the treatment center, did a trial run and proved that it was ok to use the treated sewage in snow making in 2002 or 2003…

[LongDuckJong]

My wife is a water attorney, and she says that snowmaking does little harm because all the water remains "in the system." I think the level of pollutants added to the system is generally negligible from snowmaking, but my problem is that snowmaking draws out water from streams when the streams are at already their lowest yearly points - Sept. Oct., November. This adds a great amount of stress to the fish population - through competition for food, spawning area (for some fish), and oxygen - at a time when the fish are already stressed from low water levels.

[PaSucks]

Everything above seems pretty good, but I haven't seen much mentioned about erosion and sedementation. Increased snowpack means more runoff in the spring, which can not only remove topsoil and cause landslides etc. but dramatically alter local streambeds and stream flow. Fortunatly this can be controlled fairly well with the addition of water bars and holding/settling ponds.

[Mulletizer]

If I remember correctly there is a reasonable amount of material concerning this in Downhill Slide by Hal Clifford. How fast can you say Amazon?

[shmerham]

I remember 5 or 6 years ago the Loaf (no pun intended) was blowing there treated sewage somewhere (not on the mountain though). I don't remember the process, but apparently the pressure and temperature made it safe. In fact, they said they could blow it onto the hill, if it wasn't a PR nightmare to do so.

Also, as a word of caution I've been told that 'Downhill Slide' is a good read, but one-sided and lacking in some key info.

[shmerham]

Here's a description of the crap-blowing process, but it doesn't talk much about the process of treatment much.

http://www.lagoonsonline.com/cvsd.htm

"The process is intended as a disposal method primarily, although the lagoon effluent receives additional treatment by means of the freeze/thaw process."

[Dexter Rutecki]

Making snow is like watering a golf course. Nothing good comes of it. Even the snow sucks!

Actually, once you're used to it, even freshly blown snowmaking snow is fine to ski on. Nothing like even heavy 'real' snow, but it can still be fun. Not to mention jumps on the whales, and terrain park jumps that exist only because of snowmaking. And without snowmaking, on the EC many places would basically have no season at all.
As someone said already, most, or all, EC places have their own reservoirs. If I'm not mistaken Blackcomb uses the reservoir just above the Rendezvous for all of its snowmaking.
As long as areas follow this model, I've never seen anything wrong with making snow. The only problems I've ever heard of were back when Killington or Okemo?? used to take water from a small river, there was some thought that it was reducing the water flow and harming fish at certain times.

[hot_sauce]

If I remember correctly there is a reasonable amount of material concerning this in Downhill Slide by Hal Clifford. How fast can you say Amazon?

I read that, what I remember is just the insane numbers associated with the electrical bills for all that snowmaking, even if it doesn't hurt water quality it's likely to make a significant contribution to global warming, kind of ironic huh?

[assgasorgrass]

Snowfluent. When I worked in Eastern Idaho, Island Park was having trouble with their winter time sewage ponds freezing and not being able to handle the "load". I worked with a company out of Canada that produced snowfluent, taking sewage effluent, pipe it to a large sprinkler system, very similar to a center pivot. The orifice on the sprinkler head was very small, they pumped this through the small orifices making snow. The chemical breakdown occurred through the atomization, vaporization that occurred when the high volume of water wash pushed through the orifice. I sampled the runoff of the snowpiles, it met the most stringent levels for discharge allowed under an NPDES permit. You can't make gold out of lead, but you can make snow from shit.