Will airport be good for park?

ST. GEORGE — Bigger, faster regional jets flying in and out of the St. George replacement airport will help preserve the natural peace and quiet of nearby Zion National Park, according to St. George Mayor Dan McArthur.

"These aircraft will fly at higher altitudes and won't be nearly as noisy as the turboprop planes that SkyWest Airlines has to fly now out of our current airport," said the mayor, following an announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration that it has filed a favorable Record of Decision for the project.

The issue of noise — how much of it is now created by aircraft using the current airport and whether the replacement airport would increase that level — was the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Grand Canyon Trust in 2001.

Trust lawyers argued that St. George officials and the FAA should have studied the cumulative effect of noise from every aircraft flying near and over Zion National Park. A judge agreed and sent the issue back to the FAA, which then completed an "exhaustive environmental-impact analysis" that included data from a comprehensive noise analysis.

Results of the more stringent environmental study mirrored those from an earlier environmental assessment. Both studies showed that the replacement airport would not significantly harm the environment in the affected region, the FAA noted in its Record of Decision.

St. George officials said the environmental-impact study added $4.5 million to the cost of the replacement airport. While a final cost analysis is still being completed, officials worry that the largely federally funded project could cost nearly double the original estimate of $100 million.

Grand Canyon Trust spokesman Richard Mayol said an environmental-impact study should have been completed in the first place.

"All we did was ask the court to enforce the environmental laws and regulations and instruct the FAA to do the same," Mayol wrote in a statement e-mailed to the Deseret Morning News. "The court agreed that the FAA had not followed the law and told the FAA to bring Zion National Park into the discussion and evaluate the impact of noise pollution on the park, which they subsequently did when the EIS was prepared."

FAA spokesman Mike Fergus said Wednesday the agency "chose to do a full EIS" after the judge appeared to agree that the FAA had not adequately addressed the impact of noise over Zion National Park.