The Hopi Tribe filed suit in Superior Court on Friday, challenging a decision by the Flagstaff City Council to sell reclaimed sewage water to the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort so the Snowbowl can make fake snow.
The suit is based on evidence that reclaimed sewage water contains chemicals, including endocrine disruptors, which are not eliminated during the reclamation process.
The suit also claims the making of the fake snow will violate Arizona environmental law, since runoff and overspray cannot be prevented (as required by law).
The pumping of reclaimed sewage from Flagstaff to the Snowbowl (which operates on public land in the Coconino National Forest) is opposed by 13 northern Arizona tribes for whom the Mountain is sacred.
The lawsuit comes in the wake of ongoing protests along the trenching site where Snowbowl is laying the pipeline that will carry the reclaimed sewage water up the mountain. Nineteen protestors have been arrested, either for nonviolent resistance to the pipeline or street protests in Flagstaff.
Those arrested recently included Dine' (Navajo) activist Klee Benally (who also plays in the Native American rock band Blackfire, 71 year old author and NPR commentator Mary Sojourner, and local activist Rudy Preston.
For a good background of the conflict, I suggest reading this piece by Kyle Boggs in The Sustainability Review.