The FAA's Grand Canyon Air Tour Plan: STILL NOISY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Since the earliest recorded accounts, the overwhelming natural quiet has been noted by visitors to the Grand Canyon. But Zane Grey's "eternal silence" is being quickly replaced by the noise of 20th century explorer aircraft in a surging international tourist market.
This year the airport at Grand Canyon will see nearly 200,000 takeoffs and landings, almost all commercial air tours over the Grand Canyon.
"The Grand Canyon has become the Air Tour Capitol of the USA, if not the world" boasts an official pilot briefing pamphlet of the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA warns visiting pilots that Grand Canyon airport handles up to 1000 flights daily, up to 100 takeoffs and landings an hour, "equal to any large airport in the country."
On-the-ground impacts from this aerial onslaught are not surprising: less than l% of Grand Canyon National Park is free from tour aircraft noise. Two-thirds of the park hears the drone of planes or the whop of helicopters between three and twelve hours daily, according to a 1989 National Park Service noise study. Since that report, air tours have increased in number another 25%.
A 1988 Park Service plan pushed the air tours away from some of the most developed areas into, ironically, the most pristine backcountry. The section of the Colorado River which runs through the heart of the Grand Canyon, is the longest stretch of wilderness river in the lower 48 states, but even here it is impossible to leave behind the intruding sounds of aircraft for very long, as air tours regularly fly overhead.
Deep and wide in its eastern part, the Grand Canyon has been described as a giant ear, and what it is hearing is the cacophony of a mechanized world quickly closing in on one of the last, great unspoiled landscapes in the world. Gone in the last 40 years is the silence of the ages; gone in the next forty will be even relative quiet most of the time, unless something more is done.
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An Air Tour Boom!
Takeoffs and Landings skyrocket at
Tusayan Airport
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The FAA draft proposals to protect airspace over the Grand Canyon fall seriously short, but this Administration has pledged to protect our national parks, not to oversee their plunder. Now is perhaps our best single chance to protect the Grand Canyon while there is still time to make amends.
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The FAA Proposal...
The Good, Bad, and the Noisy
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The FAA proposal will double the size of flight-free areas but leave the most heavily used tour routes largely unchanged. Banning air tours over most of Marble Canyon and eliminating them entirely from the Powell Plateau/Fossil Canyon sector, areas of extraordinary value for the river visitor and backcountry user, should be strongly supported. The problem is that most existing air tours fly somewhere else already. This is a pound of prevention but only an ounce of cure!
The Dragon Corridor air tour route will remain open, despite a Park Service recommendation to close it. This route funnels hordes of planes and helicopters right by the Hermit Rest overlook and five trails in the Hermit Basin area. The FAA proposes to move the south end of the Dragon Corridor three miles west and further into the backcountry; noise at the Grand Canyon travels 16 miles or more, so little will be accomplished. Even worse, the proposed rerouting will bring air tours closer to Point Sublime, perhaps the finest remote overlook on the North Rim.
Air tour limits are too high and only temporary. The FAA should be supported for suggesting that air tours be limited to protect the Grand Canyon just as other activities are. But the FAA's hesitant proposal to cap tours for only two years, at existing high levels, wont do much. The number of flights should be reduced to at least 1987 levels, when Congress first mandated that the Grand Canyon's natural quiet be protected from aircraft noise.
Where air tours regularly fly over the Grand Canyon they should be as quiet as possible. Remarkably, the FAA ignored recommendations from the public, the National Park Service and even major air tour operators to phase out noisy aircraft in favor of quieter ones.
Even the FAA admits its proposal will not restore natural quiet to the Grand Canyon as required by law. The FAA concedes that its proposal will result in only an 8% improvement and will still leave two-thirds of the national park falling short of the "substantial restoration of natural quiet" which Congress required in 1987. At minimum, the FAA proposal should match the Park Service recommendations of two years ago which proposed little or no air tour noise in a majority of the park. Even before I had accepted what I saw, I heard the silence...
Colin Fletcher, The Man Who Walked Through Time, 1967
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Grand Canyon
National Park deserves better!
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The Grand Canyon is not a place of second rate experience. Our National Park System is not about promoting the mundane and managing our natural heritage for the economic gain of a few.
The Grand Canyon was set aside for us and our children by our forbears for all time and in its original, unblemished, naturally quiet condition. We should not bear the responsibility of letting this slip away. If we cannot save this incomparable place, what else can we be assured of passing on?
Reach the FAA at:
1.)
Federal Aviation Administration
Office of Chief Counsel
Attn: Rules Docket #28537
800 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20591
The FAA asks for letter in triplicate.
Or... send via e-mail to: nprmcmts@mail.hq.faa.gov.
Written submission deadline for comments on rule #28537:
November 17, 1996
2.)
Send a copy of your comments to:
Senator John McCain,
Chair, Aviation Subcommittee
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Written submission deadline for committee hearing:
Friday, October 25, 1996
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Points to Make to the FAA:
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Obey the law to substantially re-store natural quiet to Grand Canyon National Park.
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Support the proposed, larger flight free zones to protect Marble Canyon and the Powell Plateau.
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Close the Dragon air tour corridor to restore quiet to Hermit Basin and Point Sublime.
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Permanently reduce flight cap numbers to at least 1987 levels.
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Require quieter aircraft where air tours still fly over the Park
For more Information:
Sierra Club - Southwest Office
516 E. Portland
Phoenix, AZ 85004
(602) 254-9330
rob.smith@sierraclub.org
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"One feature of this ever changing spectacle never changes: its eternal silence." - Zane Grey, entry in Grand Canyon Park visitor register, 1906.
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Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Chapter
516 E. Portland Street
Phoenix, Arizona 85004
This information courtesy of Dick Hingson, Sierra Club - Angeles Chapter and Nature Sounds Society Airflight Issues Consultant.
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