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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
When the Bush administration greenlighted snowmobiles in the park, it promised technology would keep the noise down. The new "quiet" models tearing around are anything but.
Apr 23, 2004 | You might think a winter job in the snowy recesses of Yellowstone National Park would guarantee perks along the lines of, say, peace and quiet. Au contraire. In light of a recent study conducted for the National Park Service, many Yellowstone employees are being advised to don hearing protection fit for a rock 'n' roll roadie -- all thanks to the relentless drone of snowmobiles in the park.
"The Bush administration tried to assure us that in the snowmobile issue, like so many others, technology is the answer -- that simply upgrading engine technology was the answer to the snowmobile problem rather than prohibiting them altogether," said Abigail Dillen, an attorney with Earthjustice. Dillen's organization represents the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and other environmental groups in their lawsuit against the Bush administration for reversing a Clinton-era ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone.
Bush's call for use of the "best available technology" has yet to result in the Prius of snowmobiles. Despite claims by the Interior Department that new four-stroke snowmobiles are far less noisy than older two-stroke models, critics charge that the new generation of machines has proven considerably more polluting -- both in terms of emissions and noise -- than promised.
In fact, the new four-stroke models are loud enough to damage hearing, according to internal Park Service documents obtained and released last week by the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees, a group of 230 retired employees and directors of the NPS.
The coalition released minutes from a meeting from late January in which a Yellowstone safety officer, Brandon Gauthier, advised employees who drive the new four-stroke snowmobiles to wear earplugs because the machines are almost as loud as the two-stroke models, reaching a noise level of 111 decibels during acceleration. That's more than 25 percent higher than the 85-decibel level at which medical experts advise the use of hearing protection.
Officials at NPS headquarters did not respond to Muckraker's repeated requests for comments. But it appears that the noise data hasn't concerned them much, according to Bill Wade, a former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park and the coordinator of the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees. "The administration has known about this for nearly three months, but the Interior folks didn't seem at all inclined to make this information available to the public," he said. "So we took it into our own hands."
The four-stroke decibel levels cited by Gauthier are chronicled in a conspicuously unreleased March study conducted for the NPS (see a data table from the study). According to the retirees' coalition, 18 of 20 tests measuring noise levels on or near snowmobiles found that those levels exceeded 100 decibels. Granted, a study with 20 samples is not comprehensive, but it was grounds enough for Yellowstone's Safety Office to cite four-stroke snowmobiles in a recent employee newsletter as a potential noise hazard that would necessitate hearing protection.
At least the NPS employees are being alerted about the danger to their hearing. Park visitors who ride snowmobiles are not.
Perhaps that's because the administration is taking its cues from the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association. The group's president, Ed Klim, told Muckraker that the notion that four-stroke snowmobile engines pose a noise problem is "a lie -- it's just plain wrong." He said, "I'm not a trained sound engineer, but I do ride snowmobiles, and I know they are quieter [than two-stroke models] -- significantly quieter." Klim, incensed by the coalition's claims, blasted the organization last week in an article in the Casper Star-Tribune as "old retired guys who don't know anything." As he told reporter Ted Monoson, "I wish they had done as much work when they were employed."
