Sports
Skateboarding’s Latest Trick: Reviving Cities
Rosa Chang and her husband and son live on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, in an extremely densely-populated urban area — roughly 47,000 people living within a half-mile radius — sandwiched between downtown Manhattan and the Lower East Side.
In 2020, when her son was four and the pandemic was in full swing, Chang grew frustrated that the urban design of their immediate neighborhood was dividing people, not bringing them together.
“There were all of these separating walls in our community,” Chang says. “There was not enough public space. Our children were playing between parked cars.”
Go Skate Day was held at the brand-new Brooklyn Banks on June 21, 2023. Credit: Lanna Apisukh / The Skatepark Project
She was well aware of a huge, nine-acre plot of land under the bridge that had been fenced off as a construction site and parking lot for more than 10 years, so she started raising the question at community meetings and around the neighborhood: What if we could use that space?
Chang reached out to two Pace University students who had started a Change.org petition to save the Brooklyn Banks. They introduced her to local skateboarder and skateboarding advocate Steve Rodriguez, who took her for a site walk and explained the space’s history. During the ’80s and ’90s, this plot of land had been home to the Brooklyn Banks, an iconic skate spot with rolling, banked surfaces and stairs. But over time, the area became associated with homelessness and drug use, and eventually found itself dormant behind those fences.
The post Skateboarding’s Latest Trick: Reviving Cities appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
Ski Resorts Are Turning Wastewater into Snow
This story was originally published by Montana Free Press at montanafreepress.org.
The Yellowstone Club, the elite resort near Big Sky that in the past has counted Bill Gates, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel as members, has become the first ski area in Montana to turn wastewater into snow. And while skiing on what was once sewage might seem odd at first blush, resort officials and local conservation groups said it’s both safe and beneficial to the environment, especially during dry winters like this one, which has left some ski areas in the state shuttered.
In fact, Richard Chandler, vice president of environmental operations for the Yellowstone Club, said recently that the new program to turn wastewater into snow is helping the resort open more runs than it otherwise might be able to this winter.
“Without [snowmaking], we’d be skiing on a lot less terrain,” Chandler said.
The new effort to use recycled water to increase the base layer of snow on Eglise Mountain follows a decade of collaboration between the resort and local environmental groups, plus a multi-year review by state regulators. It isn’t the first time the Yellowstone Club has found a new use for wastewater: For several years, it has been using recycled water to irrigate its golf course.
Officials at the Yellowstone Club say that using wastewater to make snow has allowed the resort to open more terrain to skiers this winter. Courtesy of the Yellowstone Club
In 2011, the Gallatin River Task Force, Yellowstone Club and DEQ studied whether wastewater could be used to make artificial snow to ski on. The idea was that as climate change made the region’s snowpack more unpredictable, they could serve skiers and the watershed by making snow from treated water that is traditionally just put into rivers and other bodies of water. That winter they successfully turned a half-million gallons of wastewater into two acres of snow about 18 inches deep.
According to the Yellowstone Club, 12 ski areas in eight states, plus some in Canada, Switzerland and Australia, have used wastewater to make snow in the past. However, the practice hasn’t been without controversy. About a decade ago, a ski area near Flagstaff, Arizona, was sued by a local tribe over environmental concerns about turning wastewater into snow. The Hopi Tribe also alleged that the practice would desecrate a mountain it considered sacred. The tribe eventually lost in court, but during the dispute some environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, raised concerns about the impact the recycled snow might have on aquatic life in the area.
But Chandler said that using recycled water to make snow treats the wastewater even more than it normally would be before being released into a river. By shooting it through the snowmaking equipment (it’s essentially misted onto the slopes as snow) the wastewater is treated again. Then, as it melts in the spring and enters the ground, it’s filtered a third time. Chandler also said that the compacted snow on the slopes will last longer into spring and summer, adding water to the aquifer at a critical time and helping streamflows later in the season. Because of that, groups like the Gallatin River Task Force, Trout Unlimited, American Rivers, Great Yellowstone Coalition and the Association of Gallatin Agricultural Irrigators all came out in favor of the project. Chandler estimates that the man-made snow will increase summer runoff in area creeks by about 19 days.
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“The benefits of this project are actually an enhancement to the watershed function,” said Pat Byorth, Montana water director for Trout Unlimited, in a press release. “It’s an enhancement to water supply, to water quality in the basin. So everybody from skiers to anglers will benefit from this, and downstream agriculture benefits at a time where water supply is uncertain.”
In 2020, the Yellowstone Club applied for a permit from DEQ to expand that 2011 pilot program into a permanent snowmaking operation on Eglise Mountain. The following year, the state issued a permit allowing the Yellowstone Club to turn 25 million gallons of wastewater into snow annually. Two years and $12 million later, the new system began making snow last November. Under the current plan, 80 percent of the recycled water is coming from the community of Big Sky and 20 percent is coming from the Yellowstone Club. As part of its permit, the Yellowstone Club is required to erect signage warning visitors not to consume the snow.
As winters get drier in the American West, Chandler said that turning wastewater into snow could be the key for ski areas across the region in the future. He said he hopes the club can set an example.
“We hope that we can show other ski areas in the state what is possible,” he said. “We might be the first, but I hope we aren’t the last.”
The post Ski Resorts Are Turning Wastewater into Snow appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
I Screamed Like a Girl
Confidence FOX Sports has donated considerable advertising time during the 2023 Women’s World Cup to something called The Foundation for a Better Life, a nonprofit organization that makes video public service announcements promoting positive values. At first these look like an ad for a congressional candidate or Xfinity, but at the end of each one, […]
A 1999 Moment
The cheapest way a goalie can regulate cortisol levels is by screaming—at the midfield to get up, at the defense to get it together, at the other team’s peevy striker to fuck the fuck off. They can also be observed for precious seconds lying on their tummies with the ball snuggled tightly under their chest, practicing gratitude.
These Are Women on My TV
Men are good in a runny, underdetermined way: their value to society is clear by the way they are watched, worshiped, and paid, but there’s insufficient evidence that they deserve what they have. (Lionel Messi recently transcended sport by turning down a $1.3 billion contract offer from Saudi Arabia to play for some more reasonable but still unjustifiably large sum from Miami.) Women are also good, but in a responsible, wet-cement way, where “any action, big or small, has an impact on the elevation of women’s sports.”
Landing
The ramp they skated on was in the back corner of the city’s zoo, which hosts more than 150 animals. There is also an entire exhibition of taxidermy mounts, paying tribute to the animals killed by the Israel army during the Second Intifada. Zoo-goers would pause to watch Eihab and Abdullah skate, as if they too were part of the exhibit.
Couscous and Chicken
“You should see my kids,” Issam continued. At his home in La Capelette, a neighborhood in the tenth arrondissement, one child had been wearing face paint in the colors of the French flag, the other face paint in the colors of the Moroccan flag. “It’s 50-50,” he said with a smile. “For French-Moroccans we will win no matter what.”