YOU might think the depths of the Grand Canyon would be a place of restful quiet. But with well over 100 helicopter and light-plane flights passing low overhead every day, calm is often in short supply. Now the Sierra Club, a US environmental organisation, is calling on Congress to end a two-decade fight over the Arizona landmark’s airspace and to curb the flights.
The issue was meant to be resolved by a 1987 act that required the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other agencies to restore quiet to the canyon, so that visitors could contemplate its wonders in peace. Yet sightseeing aircraft now make around . For walkers on the canyon rims, the noise can be deafening, says Dick Hingson of the Sierra Club. “The Grand Canyon may look the same, but it surely doesn’t sound the same any more,” he says.
Implementation of the law has been stalled by protests from flight operators and debate over how to measure the noise from planes and helicopters. A 1994 National Parks Service “road map” intended to smooth the process called for the act’s aims to be realised by the end of 2009.
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At the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held in Portland, Oregon, this week, on the new US administration to push the FAA and others to meet the parks service deadline and ensure that the canyon’s natural soundscape is restored.
