Arizona Daily Sun (Nov 25, 2025) by Sam McLaughlin

Arizona Snowbowl opened a day earlier than planned this year, welcoming skiers and snowboarders to a limited section of the resort’s terrain on Thursday, Nov. 20.

And on Friday morning, Nov. 21, a group of roughly three dozen demonstrators lined both sides of the bottom of Snowbowl Road calling for an end to the use of treated wastewater for snowmaking on land sacred to the region’s Indigenous peoples.

“It truly hurts us,” Hopi tribal member Meredith Talley said. “What happens to the mountain happens to us.”

Before setting up along Snowbowl Road, most of the demonstrators gathered at Peak View Vista first to join in prayer. They were greeted with coffee, hot chocolate and pancakes from other volunteers who had arrived at 6 a.m. to hold the site.

A banner strung between trees listed three demands: termination of Snowbowl’s reclaimed water purchase agreement with the City of Flagstaff; nonrenewal of the resort’s special use permit with the U.S. Forest Service when the current permit expires in 2032; and restoration of the mountain “back to its natural state.”

Some protesters also mentioned their anger over Snowbowl’s removal of roughly 7 acres of aspen groves last year. Under a new memorandum of agreement with the Forest Service (an agreement not signed by any of the tribes with cultural connections to the San Francisco Peaks), the resort cut the trees to make room for a new chairlift.

Not all of the individual protesters agreed with the banner’s call for the complete removal of commercial operations. One, who said his name was Mars, said he understood the economic value of the ski resort to the city but opposed the use of human-made snow.

“It’s OK to have the season open when the snow is reliable, but when they stretch the seasons that much, it harms everyone,” he said. Snowbowl should “just be honest about the snowfall,” he suggested.

But all present agreed that the use of reclaimed wastewater for snowmaking was, in the words of one demonstrator, “incredibly disrespectful.” They held signs reading “No Desecration for Recreation,” “Sacred is Not a Metaphor,” and “Land Back.”

The original establishment of a ski resort on the San Francisco Peaks — also known as Dookʼoʼoosłííd in Diné, or Nuva’tukya’ovi in Hopi — was contentious and opposed by some members of the area’s tribes.

The mountains are considered sacred by 13 Native American tribes.

The controversy escalated when Flagstaff first agreed to sell reclaimed wastewater to Snowbowl in 2002. The original sale agreement and the approval by the Coconino National Forest prompted a federal lawsuit in response. (The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately ruled in Snowbowl’s favor in 2008, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear any further appeal.)

More lawsuits followed, along with protests. Dozens of people were arrested in 2011 while protesting the construction of the pipeline carrying the reclaimed water up the mountain. Some chained themselves to heavy equipment or created human barriers across the road.

But Snowbowl pressed on, completing the necessary infrastructure and producing its own snow for the first time in 2012. At that time, Snowbowl management predicted the snowmaking equipment would allow the resort to stay open for 120 days each year instead of 80.

The resort’s current season has grown well beyond those predictions. Most recently, Snowbowl opened on Nov. 8, 2024, and stayed open through June 1, 2025, claiming a record 185 “skiable days.” Over the summer, the resort added even more snowmaking machines to its operations.

By the time skiers hit the slopes on Nov. 20 this year, Snowbowl had already been laying down a base for more than a month. Under a 20-year contract with the city, approved in 2014, the resort is entitled to roughly 180 million gallons of treated wastewater per year.

Friday’s protest, described as a “solidarity assembly” by participants, was organized by the Defend the Sacred Peaks Coalition, a group that includes the Sierra Club, the Arizona Faith Network, the Arizona Trail Association, the Northern Arizona University Department of Sustainability and the Flagstaff Community Coalition.

Jaron Yazzie, one of the protesters out on Friday morning, said, “This mountain is a living being, in a sense. And many of the surrounding tribes, they go to these mountains for ceremonial purposes.”

Snowmaking and other commercial activities are a disruption to that connection, he said. He blamed the desire for profit.

“This mountain doesn’t belong to anybody … it belongs to the earth. Nobody should be able to own it,” Yazzie said.

Another attendee, Brandee, said her view of the mountain was shaped by the Navajo term “k’é,” a word that expresses kinship but also mutual and reciprocal responsibility.

“We are responsible for the wild beings of one another,” Brandee explained.

Wastewater snowmaking, in Brandee’s view, violates that obligation of care. Referring to the mountain as “her,” she said, “Not only is she hurting, but the rest of us are hurting with her.”

David Spence, a member of the Flagstaff City Council, was also among the protesters.

“I’m very much opposed to reclaimed water on the sacred mountain,” Spence said.

“We know the water is desecrating the spiritual aspect of the mountain, but there’s also the aspect of pharmaceuticals and PFAS [the acronym for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemical pollutants sometimes called “forever chemicals”] in that reclaimed water,” Spence added. “The city has a responsibility for the effects on the plants and animals.”

(The city’s last study of “compounds of emerging concern,” completed in 2018, found “no data to suggest that the continued use of reclaimed water provides undue risk to human health,” but it did recommend continued monitoring and study.)

Clay Showalter, education director for the Arizona Trail Association, was preparing pancakes for the protesters on a portable stove. On the road, a steady stream of cars headed up the hill to the ski slopes.

“I think it’s a combination of folks not knowing — a lot of folks that we’ve talked to aren’t aware of this, and a big part of today is letting folks know about the wastewater that’s being used — and I also think there’s some aspect of willful ignorance,” Showalter said. “People don’t want to feel complicated about their skiing and recreation out here.”

His goal for the day, he said, was to provide more information and an opportunity for people to learn more about the mountain’s ongoing importance to the area’s Indigenous peoples.

“I’m not telling people not to go up and enjoy this beautiful place,” Showalter added. “I like to hike, I like to recreate up here, but also in a way that’s respectful of these mountains, given that they’re such a sacred place to so many peoples and so many of the communities that I’ve worked with and lived with here in northern Arizona.”

Another protester, Sumayyah Dawud, said she had been involved in protests against Snowbowl’s snowmaking as far back as 2017. The decision by the resort’s management to add even more snowmaking capacity this year was “disturbing,” she said.

“They’re trying to make a profit, and they’re thumbing their nose in the direction of all those who oppose what they’re doing,” Dawud said. “It’s greed, it’s profit, and it’s extremely disrespectful.”

Asked if she felt any optimism about Snowbowl changing its practices, Dawud replied, “I continue to pray that they do change. That being said, there’s going to have to be continued opposition. I don’t see them just suddenly having an awakening.”

The Arizona Daily Sun reached out to Snowbowl management via the resort’s public relations firm. At the time of publication, no employees or representatives of the resort had replied.

 

To see photographs and read the article online, click here.