Native Americans suffer the YUK factor ...

Excerpt from International Herald Tribune:

Treated sewage barred for snow at ski resort

14 March 2007

An Arizona ski resort's plan to use treated sewage to make snow on a mountain sacred to several Native American tribes violates religious freedom laws, according to a U.S. appeals court ruling.

The decision Monday on the resort, Arizona Snowbowl, was a victory for the tribes after years of setbacks in their fight to bar it from using waste water on the federally owned mountain 150 miles, or 240 kilometres north of Phoenix.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit cited the religious significance of the mountain to the Navajos, Hopi, Hualapai and Havasupai tribes.

See also - Arizona Republic - Fake snow out for Snowbowl.

Several Arizona Native communities hold the San Francisco Peaks sacred in their religions.

The judges wrote on behalf of the Hopi and Navajo, whose creation stories and other beliefs center on the peaks, and to a lesser extent on behalf of the Hualapai and Havasupai tribes.

The tribes objected to making snow in general as disruptive to the deities on the mountains and to the treated water in particular because it came from sewage and may even include water reclaimed from mortuaries.