Educational Bulletin #12-2

A publication of the Desert Protective Council protectdeserts.org

Are We Losing Our Heritage Of Silence?

by Dick Hingson

Helicopter over Grand Canyon Rim. From the photo archives of Dick Hingson

rand Canyons architectural majesty winds within mainly primeval silence (punctuated with soft natural sounds, even sometimes with distant, or near thunder). The ensemble, often not immediately appreciated, is only slowly cultivated to be fully understood.1 Its eternal silence was noted by early Canyon visitors. Desert lovers historically have valued stillness. The silence to be conserved was noted by English visitor J.B. Priestley.2 During the depression and war years of 19301945, Canyon visitation declined; with few aircraft to yet reach, enter it or overfly it. This incredible pageantry of sunlight and chasm, I thought, is our nearest approach to fourth-dimensional scenery. The three dimensions are on such a scale that some of the fourth has been added. You do not see, hung before you, the seven million years that went to the making of these walls and their twisted strata, but you feel that some elements of Time have been conjured into these immensities of Space. Perhaps it is not size nor the huge witchery of changing shapes and shades that fill us with awe, but the obscure feeling that

here we have an instantaneous vision of innumerable eons. There must be the profoundest of silences there because all the noises made throughout these years have no existence in this instantaneous vision of the ages, in which the longest time that any individual sound would take would be represented by the tiniest fraction of an inch on these mile-high walls. J.B. Priestley, 1937 World War IIs ending, however, unleashed noisy human technologies, soon mocking that wisdom. In 1956, one fine summer morning, with thunderheads building, two commercial airliners improbably collided over the Canyon, plunging into steep buttes. (Both aircraft had been off course for a sightseeing diversion.) This crash, in fact, triggered the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration. A noise-warning bell about no more aloneness, soon after sounded, in reputable nature writer Joseph Wood Krutchs famous 1958 Canyon book.3 Aviations noise build-up was fueled by cheap abundant oil, capitalisms love of speed, inventiveness, power and novelty. Another fifteen years, and Grand Canyon was, perversely, a commercial low-altitude aviation target for noisy air touring.

Thus arose here, within one human lifetime (1950 to ~ 2025), distressing soundscape impairment to, now, Grand Canyon Noisy Park.4 Aircraft noise, unimagined by Priestly, feared by Krutch, has overwhelmed the vast Canyon. It mars the symbolism, the aura, the sense of sublimity and naturalness and mysterious, dreamlike repose.

1950 1974: Build It, and They Will Come

Grand Canyon so quickly become Noisy Park through mainly aviation growth, and new airports5, with no systematic noise review first. Example: Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN), constructed under federal authority by 1965, within two miles of the southern boundary of the Park and lacking adequate buffer zone. Commercial or general aviation was the original goal for GCN , not Canyon air touring as such. Scenic Airlines indeed promoted air tours, at Red Butte farther south, as early as 1927. But this was dwarfed by noisy helicopter touring brought by park contractor Elling Halvorson in the late 1960s. He saw his opportunity, after completing extensive, trans-Canyon and inner canyon helicopter repairs of the critical trans-canyon water line. He saw profit opportunity helicopter tourism too good to pass up. The real gold rush began, unleashing steadily increasing noise in the park. NPS ambivalence accommodated Halvorsons new focus, by not blocking growing helicopter legions under its nonimpairment mandate for park resources (such as natural quiet). The NPS initially ignored foundational, applicable laws, including the then new 1966 National Transportation Act, Sec. 4(f); though Courts by the 1980s said it covered derogatory, transportation constructive use6 of parklands. Noise pollution is one such use, if intruding outside park boundaries, such as from airports nearby. The weak oversight, in retrospect, was rather like a dentist overlooking or poorly (but expensively!) treating small but fast-growing decay in a highly valued tooth. Warning letters (late 60s) to the Superintendent, from the public, demanded a stop to the rapidly rising noise. At most, there was NPS hand-wringing, with a batch of agency-facilitated noise studies. Meanwhile, the executive leadership (first of Richard Nixon, replaced suddenly by Gerald Ford) was mired in other decay. The 1973-1974 Congress enacted the Grand Canyon Enlargement Act, stating concerns for natural quiet. Congress told the FAA and NPS to address adverse aircraft noise impact. Yet, no Congressperson, no Interior Secretary or agency, proposed, a temporary ban, nor deadlines for neither mitigation, nor noise standards appropriate.

The 1974 passage of Grand Canyon Enlargement Act in the 93rd Congress The 1974 NPS Recommendation of Wilderness status for the bulk of the Park The 1978-79 NPS World Heritage Site Recommendation to UNESCO. Considered collectively, these baselines imply caps at 10,000 to 15,000 flights, per year, (levels existing at the time). Nothing of the sort happened. By 1978-1980 NPS data showed aircraft audibility rising to 47% of the time at study areas, an impact considered informally as major adverse. The Reagan ascension to power brought James Watt as Interior Secretary, replaced soon by Donald Hodel, both bad news for Grand Canyon, its wilderness, its quiet. The Reagan Administration de-funded the EPAs Noise Abatement office, foreshadowing neglect at best, air tour advocacy at worst. Superintendents annual reports meanwhile documented rising public disaffection with the air tour boom during the early 80s.

1985 1994: The Overflights Act (Delay, then Torpedo)

The National Parks Overflights Act, P.L. 100-91, and NPS significant major adverse noise impacts finding,8 developed coincident with yet another fatal air collision, this of two tour aircraft, off Point Sublime. Push went to Shove. The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society entered a 1986 lawsuit against the air tours in Arizona District Court. But this was the hard-nosed Reagan Administration, listening mainly to the commercial sector and its wants, hard of hearing for others. The political cabal in Interior (fox in the hen house) had oversight of the predictably timid NPS, soon tilting the balance towards the air tour operators and their noisy mines in the airspace above, through, and inside the Grand Canyon. The Overflights Act directed an immediate plan for substantial restoration of the natural quiet of the Canyon, to be (weakly, tardily) defined by the National Park Service (let alone implemented, in the Park). The legislative history 9 further directed that NPS (besides substantial restoration) do some engineering: ensure large enough flight-free zones so centered that sound was not detectable from most points within the zones, i.e., to protect noise-sensitive location points and backcountry use patterns. Thereby, significant adverse effects could best be mitigated and eliminated. Under NEPA, maps and quantitative analysis would serve as evidence.

The Reagan Torpedo: 1986-1987

The Reagan DOI (Interior Secretary Hodel, and other key political operatives such as William Horn10, and Gale Norton11) colluded with concerned air tour operators and the FAA starting in 1986. The laws term natural quiet

1975 1984: Adverse Impacts to Natural Quiet

The Grand Canyon Enlargement Act7 in context, implied a prudent bright line, base line re adverse effects.

was excised from the NPS draft objective, dissipated into an elusive balance (between industry and park users, i.e., a more political concept), to not cause significant economic dislocation of the booming air tour industry. (The law had contemplated no such industry assistance.) President Reagans signing statement12 of P.L. 100-91 expressed no support for natural quiet, advising NPS instead to listen to the FAA operatives, to speed to the solution. A 19861987 Reagan Torpedo from its DOI undermined the Park Service, further.13 Thus the hopeful administrative march to implement the Overflights Act slowed and languished. Seven more years (1987-1994) saw an FAA Special Flight Rules Area (SFAR), endless planning for planning, specific improvements or precautions, and pioneering and expensive acoustics studies. Air touring intensified exponentially, with tour numbers and noise soon well over 100,000 air tours annually by the mid 90s. (Eventually the annual number was capped [grand-fathered, essentially] at 93,971.

years, industry pressed hard, finally got the 111th Congress, in a sneak legislative conference amendment20 to say it accepted merely 50.0%, as substantial restoration acreage, under terms of the Grand Canyon section of P.L. 100-91. It ignored other laws. Congress, stayed silent as to where (geographically) the most concentrated adverse noise, or at how much higher intensity, would be allowed or not, mindless of the opposite pole of impairment. It has not explicitly authorized an impairing activity, under the Organic Act. The NPS still retains considerable authority .21

1996 2011: approaching Regulatory Failure

The fifteen-year phased approach of quiet technology (in three phases, of five years each) started soon after Earth Day, 1996, [President Clintons Earth Day directive.]22 Due date for the minimal 50% substantial restoration (or more) in the Park was to be Earth Day, 2012. It would follow on an interim Comprehensive Noise Management Plan, due by 2002, never even started, let alone completed. The agencies Y2000 balk on the Clinton-intended, midpoint plan, signaled eventual regulatory failure, notwithstanding limited gains such as the institution of generous numbers caps (on tour allocations), tour curfews restrictions early and late in the day on the East End of the Canyon. The East End thus has backcountry trails swamped with noise daily, in peak season. Some are inner-canyon trails; others impacted traverse the unique and special, high altitude North Rim World its stunning, historic location point, Point Sublime, open only in high season, stays noisy all day every day. Two subsequent court battles, known as Grand Canyon I and Grand Canyon II (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)23 meanwhile upheld NPS administrative discretion re: its weak, initial substantial restoration definition. The gains for environmentalists: (1) FAA committed in court, to finishing the limited restoration by 2008 (but which it still has not); (2) confirmation of any given day, peak day, rather than average day as compliance standard; and (3) all aircraft noise, including from general aviation and high-flying jets, to be cumulatively counted, for NEPA and management purposes.24 However, political behind-the-scenes delay and stall, during the George W. Bush years, continued through Barack Obamas first term. The whole exercise had become tangled in unproductive, drawn out meetings (2004 2007) followed by Congressional interference. FAA stalling and lack of due diligence included sluggishness re: required data, air tour counting, fee payments required, timely reports, quiet technology standards, yet not ceding to the NPS its authorities to complete its NEPA work by establishing noise indicators and impact thresholds

NPS Report to Congress on Aircraft Overflights of National Park System: 1994

The NPS/FAA initiated Finding the Balance, a 3-day, largely unproductive stakeholders meeting in Flagstaff, Arizona, March 1994. Any balance eluded all, circumventing an eloquent opening statement from Grand Canyon Superintendent Boyd Evison, whose views were quite opposite to the air tour operators dreams of everlasting growth. After Evisons retirement as Superintendent, views for a genuine, full restoration of natural quiet were undone, by Sec. 9.2.114 and corresponding Conclusion 9.2, in the 1994 NPS Report to Congress on Effects of Aircraft on Units of the National Park system. The weak NPS posturedefining substantial restoration and (implicitly) soundscape impairment, at potentially equal weight (balance?) was disappointing. It foreshadowed semi-permanent partition of the Park, on a 50:50 basis one half of the soundscape with moderate adverse impacts;16 the other half with major adverse impacts,17 possibly meaning impairment. Valued sub-regions of the Park could fare worse.18 The two presidents after Reagan did not undo the industrys economic viability guarantee (Reagan torpedo). So, the NPS had a very tricky road. It had to ensure said viability, and created no definitional guidance to guarantee complete noise abatement for any given fraction of the Park. NPS settled on a weak definition of substantial restoration (Yet, internal documents from high levels within the Administration, amply confirm 80% acreage as a somewhat latent goal.)19 The minimalist figure 50% got the publicity, the 80% goal, while not repealed, was masked. All this, in hindsight, appears a timid, rhetorical mis-fire, for noise as much as quiet. Over the next fifteen

for potential impairment. FAA insisted on publishing its own noise standards in any DEIS, delaying its release. FAA manipulated NEPA and procedural loopholes. (Meanwhile certain tribal constituencies used delay to push for advantage on ever more flights that could bring in gold, at the expense of the Canyon, claiming tribal sovereignty and/ or economic hardship). Mediocre quiet technology definitions evolved, belatedly, fitfully, even cunningly. (Other operators delayed such conversions to quiet technology; plus, some refuse to pay required fees to NPS.)

2013 2016 End Game

The Obama Administrations best move26 was finally to remove the FAA from its obstructive co-lead authority over the required NEPA process. NPS two main noise indicators (of Per Cent Time Audible, and Sound Level Intensity) are clear, likely confirming impairment of half the park, even under the NPS own preferred alternative. Thirty thousand public comments, most for a park still quieter,27 were received. The next four year presidential term in all likelihood represents the regulatory and legal end game on this issue. That may allow for a Court to resolve contested questions of authority, impairment, or substantial impairment.29 Restoring natural Canyon quiet would represent rationality, prevailing over irrational, de facto regulatory failure, business as usual. A final Rule mitigating the long, unjust noise impairment is well overdue.

Endnotes
Clarence Dutton, Tertiary History of the Grand Canon District (reprint of the 1882 edition, published by the U.S. Geological Survey, issued as vol. 2 of its Monographs), University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2001 2 Priestley, J.B., Midnight on the Desert, pp. 285-286 of Chapter 14 Grand Canyon, 1937 Harper and Brothers, New York and London 3 Joseph Wood Krutch, Grand Canyon: Today and All Its Yesterdays, (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1958) 4 Title of recent movie, by Jim McCarthy and Tom Martin 5 See Department of the Interior Airports Act, March 18, 1950, USC 16, 1, subchapters 7a 7e, The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to plan, acquire.regulateairports in. or in close proximity to, national parks. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (Forest Service), consistent with the same precedent, though operating pursuant to the Federal Airport Act, May 13, 1946, was pivotal in the planning and completing the construction of the Grand Canyon National Park Airport, later transferred to the Arizona Department of Transportation (AZDOT) 6 Legal term, of statutory interpretation 7 Ibid. 8 Determination by Grand Canyon Superintendent, Administrative Record, Grand Canyon Archival Collection, Catalogue No. 94948 9 McCain Statement on House Floor re P.L. 100-91, 1987; NPS Task Directive, 1992 10 Assistant Department of Interior Secretary for Fish, Parks and Wildlife
1

11 Interior Department Solicitor for national parks; later, Interior Secretary under President George W. Bush 12 Ronald Reagan, Signing Statement for P.L. 100-91, August 18, 1987 13 Dickson J. Hingson, Ph. D., Natural Quiet Resource Mismanagement (Overflight Noise) at Grand Canyon National Park: The Reagan Torpedo, 1986-1987, Grand Canyon History Society Second Annual Symposium 2012 Proceedings, chapter 39, (in press) 14 NPS Report, Defining a Substantial Restoration of Natural Quiet 15 Ibid., NPS Report to Congress 16 As defined by the NPS impact thresholds in its DEIS of Feb. 1, 2011 17 The partition was clear, and mapped, in the DEIS of February 2011, issued by the National Park Service, see DEIS Appendix D, Figures 3 and 4, at D-16, and D-17: Alternative A - %TAUD ContoursAll Aircraft Below 18,000 FT MSL and Within the SFRA., or same for Air Tour and Air Tour Related> 18 Specifically, the Canyon East End, the historic, original Park known and established by Theodore Roosevelt as a National Monument. 19 1995 NPS Report to Congress on Effects of Overflights on the National Park system has been admirable as foundational exposition of principles of natural quiet, of the NPS view on natural quiets importance, promoting even (and especially) protection for the quietest, extended intervals of said quiet. It was very valuable to the Sierra Club in developing the Clubs 2001 Air Tour Policy, with its appended Principles of Natural Quiet, available at http://www.sierraclub.org/policy/conservation/airtours.aspx 20 Federal Public Transportation Act of 2012, signed July 6, 2012 21 NPS 2006 Management Policies, Sec. 1.4 22 Parks for Tomorrow, April 25, 1996, Presidential Memorandum, Federal Register 23 See http://www.grandcanyontrust.org/grand-canyon/quiet_ history_lawsuits.php 24 Ibid., Grand Canyon II, decision of U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, August 16, 2002. The high altitude aircraft decision was undone by specific Congressional amendment in conference to the 2012 Highway bill, exempting their noise. 25 Grand Canyon Working Group, working under its parent National Parks Overflights Advisory Group, facilitated by the Udall Center in Tucson, Arizona 26 DEIS page 6, last two paragraphs, re DOI/DOT agreement of January 31, 2011 to make NPS lead agency for the DEIS, with the FAA relegated to a ministerial function in implementing the NPS Recommendation, protecting safety, of course. 27 Letter of August 30, 2012, from Grand Canyon Superintendent Dave Uberuaga, to Dick Hingson 28 As interpreted by NPS, relying on Sec. 1.4 of its 2006 Management Policies, re impairment and derogation. 29 As interpreted by FAA, relying on its Order 1050.1e, for implementing NEPA and satisfying DOT Act., Sec. 4(f)

Conservationist, Dick Hingson, recipient of the prestigious Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award in 2005 from the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), has been a tireless advocate on behalf of the Grand Canyon and Zion national parks. He was instrumental in the implementation of the 2000 National Parks Air Tour Management Act and is highly involved in national litigation to restore natural quiet to Zion, the Grand Canyon and other national parks.