Although the idea of skiing on sewage may not sound like an ideal winter vacation, a ski resort in Montana thinks it could work.
The resort is not planning on piping raw sewage down a mountain as a strategy to replace snow.
Rather, the Yellowstone Club, which is located north of Yellowstone National Park, wants to take the treated wastewater from sewage and make artificial snow with it and has asked the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for the OK.
Apparently the procedure, officials say, has worked out well in Europe and Australia so this wouldn’t be anything new.
The advantage of using sewage, according to resort officials, is that it would help ensure that the ski resort could open on time and would be a benefit to the local watershed.
“It’s an outside-the-box idea and it checks a lot of boxes,” the environmental manager of the club told the Associated Press.
The good news, according to state officials, is that if a skier got a mouth-full of snow after an unsuccessful turn, the snow would be safe enough to digest. That is, as long as the contamination levels stay within safe standards.
Rachelle Morris, a longtime Wyoming skier who frequents Jackson Hole Ski Resort and Grand Targhee, told Cowboy State Daily that she thinks the idea is “horrible.”
“I can’t think of a worse idea in my life,” Morris said. “The idea of using sewer water to make snow is just revolting. I don’t care how they clean it up. It’s still sewer water.”
Morris said she had a good idea for renaming the slopes at the Yellowstone Club, however.
“I love to the ski the Rendezvous Bowl and the Casper Bowl in Jackson,” she said. “They could just call theirs the ‘Toilet Bowl.'”
