Crystal Mountain Ski Resort’s new owners last year opened a 25,000-square-foot day lodge, part of a $100 million expansion plan for the outdoor destination northeast of Mount Rainier.
The resort has been so crowded in recent years that the owner, ski conglomerate Alterra Mountain Company, has dialed back access for its season pass holders to help relieve the pressure.
But all this popularity and growth has landed the resort in regulatory hot water: Simply put, Crystal Mountain has a sewage problem.
So many people visiting the alpine location means a surplus of wastewater overwhelming the resort’s treatment system, state records and interviews with regulators and resort officials show.
The resort has smashed through state limits on how much wastewater, or effluent, it’s allowed to pump into its drain field and has repeatedly failed to monitor discharges for contaminants commonly found in human waste.
The problem has persisted for years now in Washington’s beloved Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Washington’s Department of Ecology has issued warnings and violations but not fines or fees. It says the resort is making an honest effort to shore up its wastewater system, and that water quality concerns for people downstream remain minimal. But so far, a lasting solution remains elusive.
Over a month, the resort is allowed to pump out a daily average of 33,500 gallons of effluent from its treatment plant into its underground drain field that naturally filters liquid before it seeps into the groundwater. But on busy days the resort blows through that limit, sometimes for days on end.
At least one homeowner along nearby Silver Creek believes the resort has contributed to some contamination of the local waterways and wants more transparency from the company. Others aren’t as concerned.
In part, the problem is one the resort’s new owners adopted when they took over in 2018, likely made worse by climate change.
Representatives of Crystal Mountain Resort say they understand the resort continues to violate state regulations and that they’re frustrated by slow progress. The company is moving to renew its waste discharge permit and will present state officials this month with a menu of potential solutions.
Jay Manning, an attorney representing Crystal Mountain, said the resort is committed to fully following the law moving forward.
Too much sewage
When the Alterra Mountain Company began researching whether to buy Crystal Mountain Resort, its officials discovered the wastewater problems, said Manning, who previously served as head of Ecology and later as chief of staff for former Gov. Christine Gregoire. The company moved forward anyway, buying the property from the late John Kircher in September 2018. This was around the time Ecology discovered the issues as well.
But after Alterra folded the resort into its portfolio, Manning said, with a better-staffed wastewater treatment plant and more careful monitoring, they discovered the effluent problem was worse than previously thought.
The resort’s wastewater treatment plant is relatively new, said David Cochrane, an engineer working for Crystal Mountain. And it’s designed to handle and treat more than enough sewage for the resort’s needs.
The previous owners left much of the other wastewater infrastructure in disrepair, he said. Major leaks in the system allowed rain and snowmelt to infiltrate the piping and further flood the drain field.
As global temperatures rise, the Pacific Northwest can expect more rain, less snow and an increasing number of warm winter days capable of melting snowpack.
What’s more, the COVID pandemic and related surge in outdoor sports’ popularity made it difficult for resort officials to properly diagnose the problem.
Around this time, Ecology officials visited the resort frequently, said Steve Ogle, a water quality program unit supervisor with the department.
State regulators issued nine warning letters between 2020 and 2021, Ecology records show. Not only was the resort surpassing its discharge limit, but it was failing to monitor potential contaminants from its waste as well.
U.S. Forest Service officials say the resort is not in violation of its special use permit allowing it to operate in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.
But under state regulations, the violations continued. During the winter spanning 2023 into 2024, the resort surpassed its discharge limit at least 27 times — one time, it more than quintupled the limit.
To stanch the effluent flow, Cochrane said the resort began piping its excess sewage into trucks and hauling it off the mountain to be treated elsewhere.
Crystal Mountain’s new lodge complicated the situation. The lodge was fully permitted for construction, Manning and Cochrane said, but resort staff didn’t alert Ecology to the project because they didn’t think it would increase the volume of wastewater generated. The lodge replaced three existing buildings on the site.
That assumption turned out to be wrong, Manning said.
Ecology spokesperson Brittny Goodsell called the resort’s lack of communication on the matter unfortunate. Still, the ordeal didn’t substantially delay the expansion.
Wastewater violations are the latest of the resort’s run-ins with regulators. Under previous ownership, Crystal Mountain missed court-ordered deadlines to control stormwater runoff for years. In that case, from 2013 to 2018, a federal judge ruled that the resort had “knowingly and intentionally ignored its responsibilities.”
Contamination concerns
Crystal Mountain’s wastewater issues expand beyond the resort’s borders and could have environmental implications for people living downstream.
One hundred eighty-two cabins sit on Forest Service land along Highway 410 near Crystal Mountain, according to the White River Recreation Association. Most pipe their water from wells, cisterns or springs, though a few draw water from adjacent creeks. Cabins located along Silver Creek are downstream from Crystal Mountain.
West Seattle resident Shelby White has owned a cabin along Silver Creek for 20 years, and his family always brings drinking water with them.
“We’re health conscious,” White said. “We’re not testing Silver Creek but our assumption has been that with the amount of impact from the ski area upstream, there’s got to be contamination.”
White said he wants more transparency from the resort and a public comment period on any wastewater treatment improvements. This way, downstream communities can have a voice, he said.
The wastewater issue isn’t something skiers, snowboarders or hikers could likely see, state and resort officials say. Crystal Mountain doesn’t have a stagnant pool of effluent on its property. The drain field operates underground.
When that drain field is inundated, it can’t properly filter the wastewater, Ogle said. And the resort risks forming something of a direct connection between the discharged effluent and local groundwater.
This could dump a number of unwanted potential contaminants into the area like bacteria, phosphates, nitrogen, iron and more.
Ecology has cited Crystal Mountain in recent years for upticks in iron and coliforms in its effluent. The resort has also missed reporting deadlines for these types of tests.
Still, Ogle said he’s not concerned about water quality for people downstream.
In certain situations, compounds from human waste can overload waterways with nutrients, cloud the waters and lead to harmful algae blooms, said Sally Brown, a research professor of environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington. This happened decades ago in Lake Washington.
But alpine waterways, like those around Crystal Mountain, move fast, Brown said. So unwanted nutrients don’t have much of a chance to stagnate and cause problems.
Further downstream, along the White River, larger communities have treatment plants of their own, Brown added. She agreed with Ecology that water quality concerns are likely minimal right now.
Fixing the system
Ecology doesn’t appear likely to escalate the situation on Crystal Mountain for now.
What Ecology wants, Ogle said, is voluntary compliance. And Crystal Mountain is making a good-faith effort to stop flooding its drain field.
During last summer’s offseason, the resort repaired many of the gaps in its wastewater infrastructure, Ogle said. This curbed some of the excess liquid being pumped into the drain field but didn’t solve the problem.
Manning and Cochrane said the resort will likely finish its slate of repairs this summer, though even more work will be needed. At the same time, resort management has made clear to staff that reporting deadlines measuring potential contaminants are not to be missed, they said.
The resort was most recently cited for missing monthly nitrogen measurements in November.
Crystal Mountain’s discharge permit expired in January 2015, an Ecology spokesperson said. While the resort is still allowed to operate on an administrative extension, it must also work with the state to form an updated permit.
This month, Manning said the company will propose a slate of solutions to Ecology as part of that process. These could include continuing to truck out excess sewage, finding new drain fields capable of handling greater volumes of effluent or even building tanks to hold the wastewater (before or after treatment) until crowds die down and the drain field can handle more fluid.
“We just want to get everything on the table,” Cochrane said.
Some solutions might take two years, others might take six, he estimated. There’s no silver bullet and it’s too early to talk specifics.
But Cochrane and Manning underscored Crystal Mountain’s commitment to being good stewards of the mountain. The resort has already invested a lot of money into the property and they’re willing to invest a lot more, Manning said.
Note: This story has been updated to correctly describe the location of Crystal Mountain Ski Resort. An earlier version was incorrect.
