Grand Canyon Issues
What Can You Do?
Review and comment on the NPS DRAFT EIS (expected some time in 2009). Contact your Congressperson and Senator and let them know you want natural quiet restored at Grand Canyon.
Share this page
The FAA and the NPS will need to go much further to reach the required restoration of natural quiet in 50 percent of the Park. The Court did not prescribe how the government must reach the goal.
Judge Merrick Garland, who also wrote the 1998 opinion in Grand Canyon I, authored the opinion for the Court.
The Court agreed with us on both arguments and rejected all of the USATA arguments. First, it held that the FAA may not use an “average day” standard for measuring noise but must instead use the NPS’ “any given day” interpretation. The Court said it was skeptical that the FAA’s averaging method was a reasonable application of the Overflights Act, suggesting that it would be difficult for the NPS to reverse course and adopt that interpretation in the future. Judge Garland wrote:
“For the typical visitor, who visits the Grand Canyon for just a few days during the peak summer season, the fact that the park is quiet ‘on average’ is cold comfort.”
On remand (sent back to the FAA for further action), the FAA had to accept the NPS’ natural quiet definition.
Second, the panel said that the FAA had not adequately explained its decision to exclude noise generated by non-tour aircraft from its noise estimates. The Court pointed to evidence in the 1994 NPS Report to Congress showing that the amount of time during which non-tour noise is audible is significant in many areas of the park. On remand, the FAA was told to either include non-tour aircraft noise in its model or provide more persuasive evidence that it does not significantly impact noise levels in Grand Canyon. Recently released, NPS data instead proves that the noise is steadily increasing, that it is significant, and that it is much worse than a decade ago.
The Court also rejected all of the arguments raised by the USATA. The Court upheld the government’s decisions to apply the more sensitive “detectability” standard in the backcountry and to impose flight caps before finalizing a quiet technology rule. The Court also ruled that the government took adequate account of the economic impact on tour operators and on the disabled and elderly; and rejected the USATA’s argument that the FAA’s different treatment of flights to and from the Hualapai Indian Reservation constituted racial discrimination against air tour operators.
Your donations and membership dues make our work in Grand Canyon possible.
