To the New York Times Editor,
In your February 14 blog post, “A
Report Card for Ski Resorts,” there was mention that many of the ski resorts in
the northwest plan on expanding or have expanded. However, the number of skiers
has risen by only a percentage point annually since 1978.
It’s also worth noting that almost
half of all alpine ski resorts in the US have closed in the last 20
years. This poses the question: why expand? If the number of skiers are
declining every year and places are closing, the resorts cannot make back their
money if they do decide to expand.
According to the chart provided in
the article, 32 percent of resorts in the Rockies, California
and Nevada, Washington
and Oregon,
expanded. Now, I understand that not all expansion is bad. But with Colorado’s Monarch
Mountain going from a ‘B’
to a ‘D’ because they wanted to expand their lift-service, was the expansion
necessary?
The biggest factor in grading looks
to be the use of snow-making machines. The Arizona Snowball chose not to
participate in the survey. “Knowing that the snow-making project would be
judged negatively,” said the ski area’s manager, J. R. Murray. However, the use
of their specific machine shouldn’t be looked at negatively. They were the
first resort to make snow from 100 percent sewage effluent. In my opinion, the
use of power the snow machine uses is less impactful than the use of sewage
effluent to make snow.
Now, if more resorts can use sewage
effluent to make snow, then maybe these report cards and rating systems
wouldn’t penalize resorts for using snow machines. Then again, using snow
machines comes from the ever-changing climate, which is a result of many
different things. It’s a vicious circle. People drive to resort, releasing
carbon dioxide into the air and making Earth warmer. As a result, there is less
snow which forces resorts to use high-powered snow machines to bring more
people in. More people visit resort and so on.
The ski industry is growing bigger
every year. There is a huge population in the northwest and a bigger one in the
northeast that travel to these resorts during the late-winter months. If these
resorts all over the country can become greener like the Arizona Snowball, then
we may be able to see change in the future. I’m not saying that they need to
make snow from sewage effluent, but if they can cut down on fuel, electric or
any other power source, then profits could increase while keeping costs low.
Bill
Pivetz
Mahwah, NJ
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