*PRESS RELEASE*
On Saturday April 16th, more than 150 people rallied outside of Flagstaff City Hall and held a march for protection of the holy San Francisco Peaks.

The protest was called to address the imminent threat of environmental and cultural destruction by owners of the Arizona Snowbowl Ski resort.

On April 1st the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency motion by the Save the Peaks Coalition to stop Snowbowl ski area and the U.S. Department of Agriculture from cutting down thousands of trees on the San Francisco Peaks, outside of Flagstaff, Arizona.

With no injunction in place bulldozers could be moving any day. The Save the Peaks Coalition estimates approximately 30,000 trees, including old growth, are threatened to be clear-cut.

At Saturday’s protest a cardboard bulldozer with a toilet bowl on top, Forest Service and City of Flagstaff logos, attempted to run down young people holding signs painted like trees. The theatrical bulldozer was stopped by a group in bio-hazard suits who linked arms and chanted, “Protect the Peaks!”

At about 4:00 p.m. the protest shifted to a march and headed into downtown Flagstaff. When the march reached San Francisco street, someone yelled, “Save the San Francisco Peaks, Take the Streets!” and the crowd flooded the road. The crowd later returned to City Hall and rallied with speakers calling for further action to protect the Peaks.

At the end of the rally the American Indian Movement song was sung in support of a direct action occupation currently stopping desecration of a sacred burial site in Glen Cove, California near the Bay Area.

The demonstration was held during the City of Flagstaff’s Earth Day event to draw attention to their role in the development.

Since 1997 Arizona Snowbowl has been attempting to expand current
development on the San Francisco Peaks by clearcutting 74 acres of rare alpine habitat that is home to threatened species, making new runs and lifts, adding more parking lots and building a 14.8 mile buried pipeline to transport up to 180 million gallons (per season) of wastewater to make artificial snow on 205 acres. And since 1997 there has been such fierce community resistance to expansion plans that Snowbowl has been held off until now.

The slopes of the Peaks are central to the ways of life of more than 13
Indigenous Nations. For 5 decades development on the Holy Mountain has been consistently resisted through litigation, direct action and prayer.

In 2002, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, with no real
public process, quietly decided to allow wastewater to be used for
snowmaking purposes. Later that year the Flagstaff Mayor and City Council signed a contract to allow the sale of sewage effluent for snowmaking on the holy mountain. The contract has since been renewed administratively, behind closed doors without any public input.

The sewage effluent has been proven by biologists to contain harmful contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and hormones, yet the Forest Service didn’t consider what the impacts would be if anyone were to consume the fake snow. This point is the basis of the Save the Peaks Coalition’s current lawsuit which is currently appealing a negative District Court decision.

Snowbowl would be the only ski area in the world that would be using 100% wastewater for snowmaking purposes.

In 2010 Flagstaff City Manager Kevin Burke revealed a plan, secretly
negotiated with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), for use of
Flagstaff’s drinking water instead of the sewage effluent. Snowbowl was offered 11 million tax payer’s dollars to subsidize the increased costs of using potable water. Stating that the US government believed drinking water snowmaking to be “less offensive” to Indigenous Nations the plan was pushed, although no consultation with Indigenous Nations had previously occurred.

Needless to say, the Tribes were in consensus in opposing the proposal. More than 700 people, including official Indigenous representatives, showed up to a City Council meeting for consideration of the sale. The majority stated opposition to the plan.

Although the decision by the USDA to subsidize drinking water as a “less offensive” option for snowmaking appeared to be an admission that the wastewater plan was a bad idea, the USDA continues to aggressively battle the Save the Peaks Coalition in court.

Early this year the USDA began listening sessions to hear Indigenous Peoples concerns on the of sacred places. The sessions were initiated, in part, due to the Peaks controversy.

The USDA currently has the power to revoke the Special Use Permit for Arizona Snowbowl for greater public interest.

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Contact Flagstaff City Officials and urge them to RESPECT the environment, Indigenous culture, and protect public health by finding a way out of their contract to sell Snowbowl wastewater!
PHONE: (928) 779-7600
EMAIL: council@flagstaffaz.gov

Contact Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and express concern that there was no meaningful public process when the agency approved wastewater for snowmaking. File a complaint and demand full public review!

Arizona Department of Environmental Quality
1110 West Washington Street
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
(800) 234-5677 – Toll Free

Northern Regional Office
1801 West Route 66, Suite 117
Flagstaff, Arizona 86001
(877) 602-3675 – Toll Free

www.azdeq.gov/function/compliance/complaint.html

Contact the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which heads the Forest Service, and urge them to revoke the Special Use Permit for Arizona Snowbowl for greater public interest.
The USDA has been holding hearings on protection of sacred places due to the Peaks controversy. Urge the USDA to immediately place an administrative hold on all development on the San Francisco Peaks!

Tom Vilsack
U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20250

Phone: 202-720-3631

Email: TribalSacredSites@fs.fed.us

For Additional Information:
www.fs.fed.us/spf/tribalrelations/sacredsites.shtml

Send Letters to the Editor of your local papers.
Arizona Daily Sun: rwilson@azdailysun.com

If you’ve lived in northern Arizona for a few years, you’ll know Katie Lee as a household name. My interview with her was first published last October in High Desert Journal – out of Bend, OR. Part one, republished by The Noise, hit the streets a few days ago, and part two will be in the July issue.

I love these guys. In this interview, they begin talking about a hoax they did a few years ago (and it never gets old). One of them posed as a spokesperson for Dow Chemical – the gynormous chemical corp that aquired Union Carbide in 2001. Union Carbide was responsible for over 20,000 deaths in Bhopal, India in 1984, when a chemical plant leaked. The bodies are still pilling up there, and children continue to play on contaminated ground. Union Carbide, of course, denied any responsibility and then they were bought out by Dow.

The “spokesperson” for Dow claimed full responsibility and pledged billions in clean-up and reparations. They were going to liquidate Union Carbide and use the funds to help the people there. It was aired twice by BBC before they realized it was a hoax. Genius.

If you remember, this is the guy I who – after realizing that protesting outside the auction room was useless and disheartening – posed as a rich gas/oil guy and won 13 tracks of land costing $1.8 million. This was a last minute Bush administration deal for oil and gas companies that will likely not continue with the Obama Administration. So in the meantime, the land he won might not be sold out to those profitting off the destruction of the Earth.

What’s amazing to me is that he was able to do all this alone, in one afternoon, and not once was he called a terrorist. Now me might be facing jail-time, but finds the price worth it.

“I was sitting there in the auction room, thinking if I do this there’s a good chance I’ll go to prison for several years, and can I live with that?

“And I thought, yeah, I can live with that. I can live with that a lot easier than living with the guilt of seeing an opportunity to make a difference and not taking that chance.”

Here is the latest on the story – which I’m surprised isn’t getting more coverage.

Since the auction, internet fundraising has netted DeChristopher about $45,000: the cost he owes for the initial payments on the land. But he still doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him.

“I am in limbo,” he said. “I’m just waiting to hear from the U.S. attorney’s office about any possible charges and from the BLM about whether they’ll accept my payment on the land and actually allow me to purchase those leases.”