Stratton's Snow Making - Essay Example

Citations Other settlements and court rulings have forced ski areas to develop safe plans for supplementing depressed flows in streams subject to snowmaking (Rinella, 12) . According to Rinella in September 2000, Vermont's Killington Ski Resort completed construction of a 1.8-mile pipeline for snowmaking. Killington had been locked into a decades-long battle with conservationists over the depleted status of Roaring Brook (13). In the winter “ Stratton’s secrets of Snow Making” Rinella notes that the stream was anything but roaring; the ski area often sucked it down to a trickle (16).

The new $5 million pipeline brings water from Woodward Reservoir in nearby Plymouth and supplies the resort with roughly 500 million gallons in a ski season, or more than twice what several other Vermont areas are allowed to withdraw from nearby streams.Several Vermont ski areas are grappling with complications over their snowmaking policies. Managers at the Sugarbush Resort complain that they can't compete with other resorts due to the limited water allotment. Similar concerns over water allotments prompted Stratton Mountain, another Vermont resort, to build a storage pond.

That pond and a nearby lake supply Stratton with 222 million gallons of water during the ski season. "That's enough to cover every trail at the resort with two feet of snow,( “qtd, in” Frosters , 23). Frosters say "Stratton's snowmaking has been limited by temperatures, not water" (24). Cited WorkRinella , Meryl . Stratton’s secrets of snow making. 2012. Web (21 November 2012).