Grand Canyon quiet deserves even-handed protection
The editorial excerpted below is from the July 8, Arizona Daily Sun
Last week’s omnibus transportation bill in Congress will be remembered in most parts of the nation for the highway projects it funded and the student loans it kept affordable.
But here in Grand Canyon Country, the bill marks a setback in the quarter-century struggle to substantially restore natural quiet to one of the world’s seven natural wonders.
Not only does the new law maintain the status quo on noise levels by aircraft over the Canyon that many park visitors find unacceptable, it also undermines the professionals entrusted to administer our national park system free of influence by special interests.
We are not opposed to the private sector providing many of the services that visitors to national parks enjoy. Indeed, as our story on today’s front page makes clear, operations within Grand Canyon have long been “outsourced” to concessionaires, and now the private sector is poised to develop megaresorts just outside park boundaries that will leverage even more tourist dollars. Click here for the entire Daily Sun editorial.
