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Effluent snowmaking pilot project on track

Preliminary test results positive

By Emily Stifler Explorebigsky.com Managing Editor

On a 30-degree day in November, Rich Chandler and Alicia DeGroot filled two large Hefty trash bags with manmade snow, skimming the top few inches of the pile beneath the snowmaking gun.

This spot, above the Yellowstone Club’s golf course, is the site of a pilot for effluent snowmaking that’s run by the Big Sky Wastewater Solutions Forum. This group is the result of a partnership between the Big Sky Water and Sewer District and the resorts, and works with The Blue Water Task Force, a local nonprofit where DeGroot works, to coordinate the water sampling.

The gun, donated by Techno Alpine, roared in the background, using 60 gallons of water per minute pumped uphill from an 80 million gallon holding pond that is winter storage for BSWSD and the YC. During this 20-day period, the gun blew approximately a million gallons over the two-acre plot, which drains directly back into the pond.

This snow has about 20 percent snow water equivalent, explained Chandler, who manages the Yellowstone Club’s environmental program. That’s the same as normal snowmaking.

“Pretty cool it’s not yellow, huh?” he joked. “Everybody thinks it’s low end treated, but it doesn’t smell.” He later pointed out it conforms to California title 22 reclaimed water standards, a very high treatment standard that allows for non-restricted irrigation use.

Nate Johnson, a snow maker with the Yellowstone Club, monitored the generator, piping and gun as part of a 24-7 coverage of the project. The club donated these employee hours, along with the site and much of the equipment.

Next, Chandler accessed the pond with a rope, carefully descending down the slippery liner to the frozen surface. He cut a hole at the edge and filled several sample bottles with the original treated effluent water, then checked the PH and connectivity.

DeGroot took the trash bags that afternoon back to the BSWSD lab, melted it, and sent the water samples to Energy Labs in Billings that evening for testing. The water samples set baseline parameters to which the levels of nitrogen and phosphorous in the melted snow were compared.

Total bacteria, as well as E coli coliforms, solids and turbidity were also tested. The sampling results that came back in late December were promising, Chandler said.

“After receiving preliminary testing results it seems as though the snowmaking process is reducing some of the elements in the reclaimed water,” he said. “We are excited to prove this process throughout the winter months and during runoff.”

The decrease in several of the contaminants in the water is good news, and is likely the result of the snowmaking process having atomized the water molecules, treating them further.

However, the results are too preliminary to discuss in detail, Chandler said.

Long term

The project’s aim is not ultimately to blow snow onto ski trails.

Instead, it’s creating additional winter storage for effluent during the busy winter season, and relieve the burden in ponds in the meadow, says Ron Edwards, general manager of the Big Sky Water and Sewer District. When Big Sky is fully built out (it’s at 40 percent now), there won’t be enough storage.

Currently in Big Sky, treated effluent is stored in the ponds and then irrigated onto the golf courses in the summer. Big Sky doesn’t discharge anything into rivers, which is what happens to the majority of effluent in Montana, Edwards said.

For now, the snow guns are shut off until spring. This winter, Chandler and DeGroot will return to take snow core samples once a month. That, Chandler says, will test the whole profile of the snow.

“We’re hoping to find out if any treatment takes place in the snowpack itself.”

The real test will be in the spring when the stuff melts off, which is when they’ll sample the groundwater and the melt water, Edwards said.

Engineer Ray Armstrong with Billings-based HKM Engineering designed the project. He estimates it will take several years to get going, and says the immediate goal is to prove to the DEQ it’s an environmentally safe process.

Sugarloaf Resort, in Carrabassett Valley, Maine, has had a large-scale effluent snowmaking process since 1995.

“It blended in well with the ski resort,” said Dave Keith with the area’s sanitary district. “People understand snowmaking. To apply that same technology to waste—it was embraced by everyone.”

Keith says it allowed his district to continue residential commercial growth at the resort, without having to build additional lagoons. He says the water melting off these piles is, in most cases, cleaner than the groundwater it’s being introduced to.

“We’re an arid high desert and we rely on snowpack recharge for our aquifers,” Edwards said. “We need to protect those drinking water aquifers from over depletion. If you’re filling water for your golf course out of the stream or wells, it could impact our source water for drinking water.”