US court backs Indian tribe on sacred mountain

SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 13 (Reuters) 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, a US federal appeals court ruled.

''We hold that the Forest Service's approval of the proposed expansion of the Snowbowl, including the use of treated sewage effluent to make artificial snow, violates RFRA,'' a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals wrote yesterday.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, holds that the federal government may not ''substantially burden a person's exercise of religion.'' The dispute is one of the most prominent in recent years pitting the religious beliefs of American Indians against local economic interests.

According to the Navajo Nation, the San Francisco Peaks are sacred to more than 13 Native American nations.

''They walked all over our dignity,'' Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr said in 2005. ''You're committing genocide; you're demeaning us.'' The Arizona Snowbowl ski resort, 240 km north of Phoenix, wanted to use artificial snow to enable skiing throughout the winter and says the move in the San Francisco Peaks is crucial to its economic survival.

Organized skiing started at Snowbowl in 1938, but has depended on highly variable natural snowfall rather than using artificial snow as at many US resorts. In many years, enthusiasts can ski for more than 100 days a year, although in the especially poor 2001-2 season there were only four days when skiing was possible.

Last year, a US District Court judge backed the plans to allow a 25 million dollars upgrade on the 777-acre facility on federal forest land to include the use of treated sewage water.

The Navajo Nation, which has an estimated 300,000 tribal members in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, joined several other tribes and environmental groups to fight the decision.

The appeals court decision described the religious significance of the Peaks to the Navajos, Hopi, Hualapai, Havasupai tribes, among others, and how sewage is treated to make reclaimed water.

''The record supports the conclusion that the proposed use of treated sewage effluent on the San Francisco Peaks would impose a burden on the religious exercise of all four tribes discussed above -- the Navajo, the Hopi, the Hualapai, and the Havasupai,'' wrote Judge William Fletcher.

''We are unwilling to hold that authorizing the use of artificial snow at an already functioning commercial ski area in order to expand and improve its facilities, as well as to extend its ski season in dry years, is a governmental interest 'of the highest order.'' REUTERS DKA KP1025