BY DARYL NOLCH | Melbourne, Australia
Your article on agents of change [“Human Nature Foils Squaw Village Discussion” in the September print edition] is sweeping the world through social media with users involved in international ski resorts, travel agencies, destination tourists, instructors, and aspiring Winter Olympians. It’s time the parties sat down and talked, free from fear or favor via an agent for change.
I live and ski in a country of hot deserts where ski resorts recycle water for snowmaking and for fire fighting via snowguns. The United Nations Association recognized these innovations with an award. Accordingly, I am surprised that both sides in the Squaw Valley debate bleat about the environment and saving the lake, yet where is the water recycling plant?
We read about the Rim Fire, and yet there’s no mention of upgrading the fire fighting capabilities to save ski lift infrastructure by using recycled Class A potable water through snowguns. Why not save infrastructure and treed slopes from a fire’s deforestation that can lead to inbound avalanches hitting the proposed building? Losing lift infrastructure and having avalanche risk is not good for business in my view. Not maximizing snowmaking resources makes no business sense either, as illustrated by the defections to Northstar a few years ago.
Perhaps it is time that the stakeholders in Squaw sit down and broker a peace deal that utilizes innovations. There are concepts such as carousel parking on a rotating platform and car stackers, and one can build small employee housing condos that have an inbuilt car park. There are Babylonian garden walls that hide car-parking structures. Elsewhere in the world there are rolling wet carpets used 365 days a year to teach skiing to beginners to advanced students, and facilities for teaching aerials to budding Winter Olympians. There are so many innovations out there that it surprises me that all the stakeholders are still at loggerheads. Hopefully common sense prevails.
