When noise is issue, wildlife live high life
 
 
July 29, 2004
 
By Laurie Roberts
 
 
 
 
The Arizona Republic
 
P.O. Box 2244

Phoenix, AZ 85002
 
602-444-8400
 
 
To submit a Letter to the Editor: opinions@arizonarepublic.com
 
I now know how to solve some of the noise problems around Scottsdale's much-maligned airport.

In a word: moose.

We need to get us some, and a few elk, and maybe throw in a grizzly or two for good measure.

If you want to get the oldest, noisiest jets out of Scottsdale, it seems that the only way to do it is to import some wildlife with sensitive hearing and declare this place a national park.

I am not making this up.

Last month, Jackson Hole Airport became only the second public airport in the United States to ban older, noisier jets: the dreaded Stage 2 aircraft.

Generally speaking, the FAA frowns on such notions of discrimination and already has tried to put the kibosh on the one airport that's tried it.
 
Florida's Naples Municipal Airport is still tied up in the federal courts over whether it can hang the 'No Vacancy' sign when old clunkers approach.

Now, in steps tiny, trendy Jackson Hole, in Wyoming.

It, like many airports, has long wanted to get rid of Stage 2 aircraft only to have the FAA -- not to mention the business aviation lobby -- thwart any such attempt. Ah, but the flyboys didn't count on Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas or the U.S. Department of the Interior, which runs the National Park Service.

The Republican senator figured out a way to fly around the FAA, so to speak. He got his hands on last year's sweeping FAA reauthorization bill and added a sweet little clause allowing any airport that's located in a national park to ban Stage 2 jets.

Of course, there is only one airport in the 48 continental states that sits squarely inside a national park, and I'm thinking you've already guessed that it's Jackson Hole, in Grand Teton National Park.

As it turns out, the airport's lease with the Department of the Interior requires a certain amount of peace and quiet.

Translation: It's OK to foist the old noisy jets on regular folks, but let it interfere with the mating habits of the moose, and voila! Congress steps in.

And so on June 28, Jackson Hole instituted a congressionally approved ban on Stage 2 aircraft.

The move hasn't been lost on Phil Vickers, who sits on Scottsdale's Airport Advisory Commission.

"It means that if the noise of Stage 2 aircraft affects animals and wildlife and the environment, you can ban Stage 2," he says. "But if it affects the lives of people in ordinary America, you can't do it."

That's about the size of it, and it galls Vickers. He's long wanted to wave goodbye to the old noisy jets in Scottsdale, which he says you can hear from more than 20 miles away. Plenty of people agree with him. Unfortunately, none of those people work for the FAA, which seems to be the only voice that counts - that is, unless Naples prevails in its legal battle.

"The law is very clear," Donn Walker, an FAA spokesman told me. "Except for that one airport (Jackson Hole), you cannot ban Stage 2 aircraft."

While Vickers says a ban on Stage 2s would make a "huge" difference in noise levels, Airport Director Scott Gray says the older jets are not necessarily Scottsdale's biggest noise problem. Of the 100 jets based at Scottsdale Airport, only seven are Stage 2s, he said. The rest are the newer, quieter Stage 3s.

Most noise complaints, he says, are lodged against helicopters and small planes. Still, Gray says, he, too, would like to bid adieu to the Stage 2s.

"Unfortunately," he says, "we don't have the ability, unless we designate Scottsdale Airpark as a national park, to get that same exemption as at Jackson Hole."

Which, of course, is precisely the point.

If Stage 2 aircraft are worrisome to wildlife, surely they aren't so pleasing to people either.

"It's just a real simple thing," Vickers says. "I mean, who takes priority in this country, the people or the moose?"

Do you really need to ask?
 
Copyright 2004, The Arizona Republic