Page 12 - the NOISE January 2016

newSyearinreview review by kyle BoggS
Make flagStaff great again: reckoning with SnowBowl
the start of a new year always begins as a kind of reckoning. In that moment, when this year becomes a new year, we imagine the world we wish to create; yet we are simultaneously haunted by the past. There is no going back — that much we know for sure. In a place like
Flagstaff — a city that lives in a state of perpetual nostalgia for itself — those ghosts itch to be reckoned with.
when the presidential candidate who shall not be named launched his campaign with the slogan, “Make America Great Again,” nobody should have been surprised that what fol- lowed was and (unfortunately) continues to be a disgusting tirade of never-ending hatred and bullsh*t. Coded in the word, “again” after all is a longing for a time when the economic dominance of white men prospered on the backs of people of color. It was a time when tell- it-like-it-is-tough-guys could freely denigrate women, immigrants, the disabled, LGTBQ com- munities, and the poor without fear of backlash from the “PC culture.” It was a time when our environment was treated like a cash machine, in which withdrawals could be made without any oversight. This is not the world we wish to create, let alone, recreate. There is no “again.” Those who deploy the term “PC culture” do so only out of ignorance of their own privilege, their own refusal to wrestle with ghosts.
Those emboldened by this phrase are the same folks who, during the last two presidential elections called for white citizens to “take our country back.” One does not have to ponder very long to complete the phrase: take our country back from whom? And return it to whom? And who the hell is “we?”
“Make america Great again” and “Take Our country Back” is what the final gasping breaths of white supremacy sound like: pathetic, if not wretchedly insecure. In Flagstaff it also sounds like, “Reclaim the peaks.”
On October 29, 2014, the arizona Snowbowl ski resort announced it was selling to Colorado businessman, James coleman. By January 2015, the sale was still in limbo and rumors started flying around as folks speculated about what was going on. Mr. Coleman also owns purgatory Ski Resort in Durango, Sipapu Ski & Summer Resort in Taos, and pajarito Mountain Resort in Los alamos. The plan was to acquire the Arizona snowbowl ski resort to form a 4-mountain resort chain, where season pass holders would be able to visit each of the resorts under one
“Power Pass.” By the end of July, an agreement was reached.
If snowbowl were sold out right to Mr. Coleman, a new Special Use permit would have to
be filed with the Forest service. Depending on the details — or as the Forest service said, the “structure of the sale,” a new owner might have also needed a new environmental impact
Statement, and would have had to go through the National environmental policy act pro- cess. In order to get around all this, the resort was not sold to Coleman; instead he invested $10 million to become a minority shareholder. This means that season pass holders will still be able to access all four mountain resorts with one pass as Mr. Coleman envisioned. This also means that Mr. Coleman, majority shareholder eric Borowsky, and the other wealthy inves- tors — none of whom live anywhere near Flagstaff — can continue to make gobs of money off of Flagstaff’s water resources and exploit a mountain on stolen native land that is held sacred by 13 tribes. All the while the City of Flagstaff gets to maintain its identity as a quaint “ski town” and can continue pretending this for-profit-corporation that lies outside city limits is somehow a “local business” that deserves our support no matter what, and that this business is somehow invested at all in this community.
Back when I interviewed Mr. Borowsky over the phone last year about this, he asked me at the very end of our conversation, “Your articles seem to be a little one-sided, against the snow- bowl. Is that your philosophy on that?” I remember telling him that as a journalist I sought to tell the whole story, that I’m drawn to the complexity, and I felt I had a responsibility to cover what other publications were not. This included native American articulations of cultural and spiri- tual survival, the questions environmental activists raised about dwindling water resources and out-of-date water treatment standards, and concerns expressed by the scientific community over reclaimed wastewater in terms of its impact on local ecology and human health — after all, 12 years later, we still don’t know exactly what is in the water, or what it’s doing to the im- mediate environment.
what I wish I would have said is, like it or not, those perspectives are part of the story, and that’s not “one-sided;” that’s at least five different “sides,” which all happen to challenge the perspective in which Mr. Borowsky is financially vested, which is what again? More skiing, and more fun for Phoenicians!? The Arizona Daily Sun and Flagstaff Business News, and dozens of winter sports blogs have already written that article.
12 • january 2016 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
photo by Shane McDerMott what I didn’t tell him was the straight answer he was looking for, which is to say yes, I am
against the Snowbowl — not because I am against skiing, but because of the insidious racism it has galvanized in Flagstaff under the seemingly innocent guise of recreation. Up until just a few months ago, if one were to go to reclaimthepeaks.org, they would be taken to snowbowl’s website.
Let’s be clear, Flagstaff: those “Reclaim the peaks” bumper stickers are fundamentally racist. Yes, it was a reaction against the “Save the peaks” stickers to voice support of snow- bowl’s decision to spray reclaimed wastewater on the san Francisco Peaks. A more accurate sticker — one that is honest with history — would read, “Reclaim the Peaks, Again.” white ski- ers and business folks ironically sought to “reclaim” land that was already systematically stolen from regional native people; they wish to “re-claim” it today to spray reclaimed wastewater on it, cementing an often-unarticulated connection between colonialism and recreation. To re- claim the Peaks is to revisit colonial violence, yet simultaneously deny — if not trivialize — the legacy of that violence.
Beyond the racism, and beyond the untested impacts on human and ecological health, there are many in Flagstaff — and in the southwest in general — who are philosophically against the idea of committing water resources out of the city for recreation during a time of scarcity and uncertainty. In August 2014, Flagstaff Utilities Director Brad Hill approved snowbowl’s request to amend its contract with the City. Unlike most of the City’s 38 reclaimed wastewater contracts that must be renewed every 5 years, the amended contract would provide water re- sources to snowbowl for 20 years — through 2034. Meanwhile the City’s master plan concern- ing potable water security is revisited only every 5 years. Many Flagstaff residents expressed concern that the City seems to be planning further ahead into the future for snowbowl than it is for its own citizens’ drinking water.
Of further concern is that, according to City Code, this decision did not even require a City Council vote, but was approved administratively by Mr. Hill. The policy allowing this was ad- opted in April, 2014. Flagstaff citizen Rudy preston submitted a Citizen Petition in January 2015 urging City Council to re-open the City’s water policy. “You gave away your right,” he told the council, “to have any say in any huge water contracts to out of city developers.” In a close vote, that request was denied, but it did open several questions to be answered about the wa- ter policy, such as the difference between a new water contract and an amended one — and this is important because a new contract would have required a vote.
The City answered, “If a user wishes to make significant modifications to the terms of the Reclaimed water Agreement, a new agreement will be required.” It’s safe to say that adding 15 years to a contract should count as “significant.” even under the city’s terms, “change of delivery schedule” is one example of what counts as “significant modifications.” And yet, snowbowl gets a pass. Flagstaff citizens may never fully know what conversations took place behind closed doors, but nobody can argue that the sequence of events is anything less than suspicious.
In April 2014, the Council gave one person an arguably inappropriate amount of power to “amend” reclaimed wastewater contracts; in July of that year, snowbowl requested its contract be extended by 20 years; at the end of October, snowbowl announced they were planning to sell the resort. strategy or not, these events put the last 13 years in context: divide the City by inciting racism and trivializing environmental concerns, get the City to bend over backwards for you, then cash in as quickly as possible. After all, these are just business decisions and none
of the owners live here anyway.
Obviously they weren’t able to cash in the way they would have liked due to all those pes-
ky environmental regulations and lawyer’s fees, but the situation has given the City much to reckon with in terms of its relationship with the resort moving forward. Flagstaff is a post-in- dustrial logging and railroad boomtown turned quaint tourist-driven city. As much as we wish it weren’t true, we are not turn-of-the-century lumberjacks, ranchers, and cowboys.
we’ve learned that our reliance on tourism dollars comes at a price for those who have tried to build a life here. If we wish to make Flagstaff great, we have the responsibility to make it great for everyone, not just for tourists and not just for out-of-town businessmen. Our responsi- bility — our ability to respond, to reckon with the ghosts that haunt this city — starts with being honest about who we are, what we value, and at the same time confront our mistakes. 2016! Destroy, imagine, rebuild.
| Kyle Boggs is finding more and more words with “Ph” in them.
kyle@undertheconcrete.org