National parks across the country continue to lag behind a court-ordered schedule to complete air tour management plans and are failing to conduct environmentally required studies as they develop those plans, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

The watchdog organization on Tuesday noted that two parks -- Mount Rainier and Olympic -- last week released their air tour management plans, but claimed that a score more parks will miss a court-ordered deadline altogether and many of those will be incomplete, lacking legally required environmental reviews.

“While we are glad the agencies are at long last starting to do their jobs of curbing noisy and disruptive park air traffic, the quality and integrity of those plans leave a lot to be desired,” said PEER General Counsel Paula Dinerstein, noting that most all the official noise and other studies upon which several plans are based have not been available for public scrutiny. “These agencies still do not seem to grasp that the law commands environmental review and public involvement at the earliest stage of planning and through its entire course, not waiting until after the final decision has been made.”

The issue of air-tour management plans for the National Park System has been hanging over the NPS and FAA for more than two decades. Back in March, almost two years after a federal judge ordered the agencies to get the job done by this summer, they said the air-tour plans for eight national parks would not be completed on schedule.

When the agencies reported that situation to the court in March, PEER asked the court to suspend all overflights across those parks that haven't finished their plans by August. The parks involved are Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Rainbow Bridge National Monument, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Badlands National Park, Hawaiˈi Volcanoes National Park, and Haleakalā National Park.

Late last month a federal appellate court gave the National Park Service and Federal Aviation Administration until this month to explain why they are so behind in crafting air-tour management plans for many units of the National Park System. The one-paragraph order handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia directed the two agencies to "(1) explain why [they] were unaware that they were behind schedule as of their November 24, 2021 status report; (2) propose firm compliance dates for each park; and (3) provide the legal basis for any anticipated categorical exclusion and the date by which the agencies will make that determination."

It was 20 years ago that the National Park Air Tour Management Act of 2000 was implemented and required the FAA, in coordination with the NPS, to set limits on overflight numbers, timing, and routes to protect park resources and the visitor experience from noise and disruption in any park with more than 50 overflights a year. After what some saw as intransigence, in May 2020 a federal judge ordered the Park Service and FAA to complete air-tour management plans by the end of this August for several parks. 

For more than a year, the FAA and NPS filed quarterly progress reports with the court. In their latest filing, in late February, the agencies said they would be unable to complete plans for the eight parks with some of the highest levels of air traffic within that deadline.

In addition to being behind schedule with finalizing the plans, PEER said the two agencies are claiming "categorical exclusions" -- claims that air tours won't have a significant impact on either the visitor experience or natural and cultural resources of a park -- for deciding not to follow the entire NEPA process in crafting air tour plans for 15 parks. This, said PEER, despite receiving more than 21,000 public comments for those parks' plans. Instead of doing noise surveys or any environmental analysis, PEER said the agencies will simply grandfather in, on a permanent basis, the current air traffic levels previously accepted without any review on an “interim” basis in the following park units:

• Glacier National Park
• Death Valley National Park
• Golden Gate National Recreation Area
• Muir Woods National Monument
• Point Reyes National Seashore
• Olympic National Park
• Everglades National Park
• Mount Rainier National Park
• Arches National Park
• Canyonlands National Park
• Natural Bridges National Monument
• Bryce Canyon National Park
• Bandelier National Monument
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park
• San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park

Last week FAA and NPS announced the first-ever final air tour management plans issued for both Olympic and Mount Rainier, two parks with among the lowest levels of air traffic. All the other parks, however, will miss the court-ordered August 31 deadline, with some not slated for completion of their air tour management plans for years, according to PEER.

According to the nonprofit organization, the FAA and NPS:

• Predict that nine parks, including Glacier, Great Smoky Mountains, and Golden Gate, will have completed plans by January 31, 2023, but none of those will have undergone the NEPA-required, publicly accessible environmental assessments;
• Forecast that ten other parks, including Arches, Bandelier, Death Valley, and Mt. Rushmore, are due for completion during the period between the late 2023 and the end of 2024, with even more delays possible. These parks will undergo NEPA review, but none have yet to even publish their draft environmental assessments.
• Confess that New York Harbor’s plan is in flux as they “are not able to complete a voluntary agreement in the near term” and may now have to begin the NEPA process.

“The court has ruled that the agencies’ long inaction constituted unreasonable delay and must soon decide how much more unreasonable delay it will abide,” said Dinerstein, noting that the agencies’ brief recounts a litany of “the-dog-ate-my-homework” type excuses ranging from bad weather to “complex airspace.”

“In the coming weeks, we will again ask the court to enforce the law and end the reign of unmanaged overflights across our national parks,” she said. 

In its two previous enforcement motions, PEER urged the court to ground the overflights in any park subject to the court’s order without a properly completed air tour management plans by the court’s deadline of August 31, 2022.