The Water Information Program

A federal appeals court heard arguments Tuesday from lawyers for an Arizona ski resort and Indian tribes battling over the resort's plan to make snow using reclaimed wastewater at the Arizona Snowbowl resort north of Flagstaff. The panel was acting on a lawsuit filed by American Indian tribes who consider the San Francisco Peaks sacred. "When you decide to contaminate it with reclaimed wastewater, with filth, to make snow, that doesn't help my way of life," Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. said in a statement. "That doesn't help when I talk to my children and grandchildren about the importance of our way of life and the pride that is to be taken because of our way of life." The panel's ruling in March blocked the resort's plan to expand and add snowmaking equipment that would use treated wastewater. The ruling overturned an opinion by U.S. District Judge Paul Rosenblatt in Phoenix, who said last year the tribes failed to show the project would affect their exercise of religion.

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