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Article 11/22/06 |
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WINTER-USE
DEBATE GOES ON
Effects of increased traffic worries some
By Scott McMillion, Bozeman Daily Chronicle
11/22/06 |
Yellowstone
National Park is a lot cleaner and quieter than it used
to be when 2-stroke snowmobiles had the run of the place,
a new environmental impact statement shows.
However, not all of the improvements
can be attributed to the new "best available technology"
4-stroke sleds now mandatory in the park.
There's also been a huge reduction in
snowmobile traffic. In the winter of 1996-97, when animal
rights groups first sued the National Park Service over
winter tourism and ignited a hot political debate that
isn't over yet, 72,000 people entered the park on snowmobiles.
Last year, only 29,000 made the trip. During that same
time period, the number of people riding in multi-passenger
snowcoaches nearly doubled, from just over 10,000 to nearly
20,000. Now, park planners say they would allow that traffic
to more than triple, from 50,000 over-snow travelers last
winter to as many as 172,000 in the future. Snowmobile
numbers could grow from last year's average of 253 daily
to 720 daily. Snowcoach entries could grow from an average
of 37 daily to 78. Those numbers are included in the new
EIS, which spells out the park's proposed long-term winter
use plan and its impacts.
That document maintains that, with improved
machinery, the park's air quality will remain well within
all state and federal regulations.
Noise pollution, on the other hand,
is a tougher thing both to qualify and quantify. After
all, one man's music is another man's noise.
But allowing a big increase in the number
of snowmobiles doesn't make sense to some people.
"I don't understand how they can
triple the number of machines," said Chris Mehl,
who works in The Wilderness Society's Bozeman office.
"Their monitoring shows they've got noise problems
with just 250 machines."
But tripling the number of machines
in the park wouldn't mean a tripling of the noise, according
to John Sacklin, the park's chief planner, though it will
mean an increase.
All winter tourists must be accompanied
by a commercial guide, the new plan says. That means groups
will run on fairly tight schedules. Most traffic will
take place in the mornings or the afternoons, which means
a "long period in the middle of the day of virtually
no traffic," Sacklin said.
During the mornings and late afternoons,
machines will be audible from a farther distance from
the groomed roads where they must travel, Sacklin said.
But the number of park acres where machines can be heard
will not increase greatly.
Under current conditions, a snowmobile,
snowcoach or groomer can be heard at some point in the
day in 12.6 percent of the 2.2 million-acre park.
Under the proposed plan, that number
would grow to 12.9 percent, an increase of 6,000 acres
along travel corridors and developed areas.
And not all the noise comes from snowmobiles.
At a measuring station near Madison
Junction, sound measuring devices found that, when it
comes to making a lot of noise, snowcoaches were the biggest
culprit.
A sound level threshold of 70 decibels
- roughly equivalent to a vacuum cleaner running indoors
- was exceeded 129 times last winter. Of that total, 100
incidents were attributed to snowcoaches.
That's why the park's new plan would
require snowcoaches to use cleaner, quieter technology,
just as snowmobiles do.
Scott Carsley, a snowcoach operator
in West Yellowstone, said he already has put new engines
in about half of his fleet, making them much quieter and
cleaner.
The EIS notes that at both Madison and
Old Faithful, oversnow vehicles already exceed the noise
"thresholds" the park has established, even
with the relatively light traffic.
Allowing almost 500 more snowmobiles
into the park every day is bound to confound that, Mehl
said.
"I don't understand how you can
put that square peg in that round hole," he said.
The noise thresholds are not strict
boundaries, Sacklin said.
"They are not there to necessarily
guide what we do or don't do on the ground," he said.
And nobody is sure exactly how much
noise the extra snowmobiles will make, of if people will
show up to rent them.
The predicted noise levels are based
on mathematical modeling, Sacklin said, and "may
or may not match what we learn on the ground."
Measuring sound - its volume, its range,
its appropriate level - is a fairly new science.
"Soundscape is a challenging subject
for all of us," Sacklin said.
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