Don't eat the snow

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April 4 — By Michael Christie

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Who says that sewage can't be as pure as the driven snow?

An Australian ski resort has just completed trials to see whether it can turn treated waste water into man-made snow, and says the final product is so clean you could drink it.

David Westphalen of the Mount Buller Resort management board in the southern state of Victoria said the idea came about when environmental authorities asked the resort whether it could dispose of its treated waste on site.

Always eager for some extra snow, resort managers decided to see whether the waste could be sufficiently disinfected and filtered to be put through snowmaking machines on the ski slopes.

"We can have 20,000-odd people in the village on any one day during the snow season and obviously they do the human thing and we end up with sewage," Westphalen told Reuters on Thursday.

Passing the waste through three separate processes including ultrafiltration through a membrane capable of removing bacteria and viruses, the resort found it could produce recycled water that was "absolutely crystal clear," he said.

"It's actually better quality than what we pull out of the creek."

The process would also benefit the environment as less water would be taken from local creeks for snow-making. Westphalen estimated recycled waste water could cover around 10 percent of the resort's daily snow-making needs.

The problems may begin when the treated waste water, which comes from snow melt as well as sewage, is mixed with fresh water in the resort's snow-making reservoir and sprayed onto slopes.

"The difficulty will be educating skiers that the material they're skiing on started off life as sewage but has been through a number of processes before it actually gets on the snow. Assuring people of that is a difficult thing," said Westphalen.

The final consumer test is some way down the road and it is hoped skiers won't pooh-pooh the scheme.

Westphalen said Mount Buller estimated a membrane big enough to ultrafiltrate around 211,340 gallons of waste water a day would cost at least $1.06 million.

If money is found, it would be at least three to four years before the process is actually put into practice.

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