http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/07/natives-say-forest-service-broke-environmental-rules-obama-administration-asked-to-take-a-new-look/In the latest twist to the saga involving the increasingly likely desecration of sites held sacred by some American Indians, a coalition of Indian citizens has filed a last-ditch legal appeal against the U.S. Forest Service, hoping to change a tide that has long seemed unchangeable. By using science and the law to back their religious and spiritual beliefs, the coalition wants the courts to find that the federal agency failed in its duty to protect the public’s health, while breaking the federal government’s own environmental rules as a result of deciding that a company could develop a ski resort using treated wastewater sprayed on Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks.
A legal motion offered by the Save the Peaks Coalition, filed in June before the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, says that an environmental impact statement offered by the U.S. Forest Service in reference to development of the Snowbowl Ski Resort does not include the federally required “reasonably thorough discussion” of the impacts associated with the ingestion of snow made from reclaimed sewer water. The argument reasons that as a result of the peaks being infested with treated sewage, which is the company’s ongoing plan that has been allowed to proceed without intervention from the Obama administration, some of this sewage may end up being eaten by people who live near or visit the mountains. And perhaps they could be sickened by it, physically—or even mentally.
The brief cites a 9th Circuit opinion from 2007 that says, “If an agency fails to consider an important aspect of a problem . . . its action is arbitrary and capricious”— and can therefore be stricken down. The plaintiffs feel that the legal precedent would be justly applied to the Forest Service’s 2005 decision to allow the Snowbowl company to desecrate the peaks via reclaimed wastewater. Since that decision in 2005, various legal proceedings have delayed the action, but a major gain was made by Snowbowl last year when top U.S. government officials in the Obama administration said they would support the development of the slopes, as long as federal rules were followed in the process—and in contrast to the desires of several tribes in the region.
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