This historic occasion is important to people throughout the world but it's especially significant to the people of Arizona. As citizens of the Grand Canyon State, we take immense pride in the park and appreciate the awesome stewardship responsibility with which we, today's caretakers of the canyon, have been vested.
Anyone who has visited the Grand Canyon, beheld a sunrise at Navajo Point, hiked the back country on the Tanner Trail or run the rapids at Lava Falls understands what many scribes and poets have tried in vain to describe. Words pale before the indescribable. But, perhaps, John Wesley Powell, the Civil War hero who, in 1869, was the first intrepid soul to fully explore the Grand Canyon captured it best. He said, simply "The Grand Canyon is the most sublime spectacle on earth."
The 75th Anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on what the Canyon means to each of us. It's a time for grateful remembrance of our forefathers who had the wisdom and foresight to recognize the value of the Grand Canyon and to make protection of its resources our guiding ethic.
We remember people such as John Wesley Powell; and President Benjamin Harrison, who, in 1876, as a Senator from Indiana, introduced the first bill to establish the Canyon as a national park. We remember President Theodore Roosevelt under whose leadership conservation of the natural resources of the Canyon was so nobly advanced; And, the flamboyant Henry Fountain Ashurst, the Arizona Senator, whose father perished in the Canyon, and who, in 1919, introduced the bill signed by President Woodrow Wilson creating Grand Canyon National Park 75 years ago. And, with fondness and gratitude, we remember the many other citizens and public servants who have dedicated their careers and their lives to seeing that the canyon would be forever grand.
As we remember and honor the past, it's also a time to take stock of the present -- to examine how well we are meeting our responsibilities as today's stewards of the Grand Canyon. It's time to rededicate ourselves to preserve and protect the Grand Canyon for the next 75 years and beyond.
Proper stewardship of the canyon and its resources has never been simple or easy. Like a white- water rafting adventure on the Colorado River, the course is calm and subtle at some points and twisting and rough at others, but it is always well worth the trip.
Over the past several years, we have been confronted with a myriad of difficult and complex issues affecting the Park. We have enjoyed success on a number of fronts but many challenges are ahead. There is much work to be done.
Safety issues and noise pollution associated with excessive overflights of the park demand our continued attention. In 1987, we passed the National Parks Overflight Act, which zoned the airspace over the canyon and established, in law, the groundbreaking goal of restoring natural quiet to the canyon environment. Visitors seeking peace and solitude in which to enjoy the canyon experience deserve the opportunity to do so without the incessant intrusion of aircraft noise. At times the Grand Canyon has seemed more like national airport than a national park.
We have made some progress. Flights below the rim have been banned and certain areas of the Canyon are off limits to aircraft, but much work remains to be done. The number of park overflights has increased since passage of the legislation, and we have not yet met our goal of “substantially restoring the natural quiet of the Grand Canyon.”
We must press on until the goal is achieved. Quiet aircraft technology must be developed and brought on line by air tour operators as soon as feasible. Pending the transition to such technology, if we need to limit the number of overflights to assure public safety and restore the natural quiet to meet the goals of the law, then that’s what we must do.
Clearly, there is a limit to the amount of traffic park airspace can accommodate before safety and natural quiet are compromised. We must endeavor to find that level and manage the airspace accordingly.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Park Service are reviewing canyon air regulations and will meet with air tour operators and others next month to begin updating the regulations. They should approach this work committed to meeting the standards and expectations codified in the National Park Overflights Act.
On another front, we must continue our efforts to protect air quality and visibility at the Grand Canyon. In 1992, an historic agreement was reached to control pollution from the Navajo Generating Station to improve and protect Canyon visibility. But, there is more we can do.
Today, under the auspice of the Environmental Protection Agency and Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission, we are investigating other potential contributors to Canyon pollution, including emissions from the Mohave Power Plant in Southern Nevada, and haze creeping into the region from the Los Angeles basin.
Studies on the impact of these sources and potential remedies will be completed next year. Sources that significantly impact canyon air quality should be cleaned up to protect the scenic vistas for which the Grand Canyon is world-renowned.
In the past few years we have made great strides in protecting the Park's water-based resources and recreation. In 1992, we passed the Grand Canyon Protection Act to stop the damage caused by fluctuating water releases from Glen Canyon Dam--flows which were destroying Colorado River beaches, degrading recreation and harming fish and wildlife within the park.
As a result of the new law, water now flows from the dam in a manner that better protects downstream resources. The Department of the Interior will complete a final environmental impact study on dam operations by the end of the year.
The study will give us the scientific data we need to reconcile the dam with the need to preserve, protect and enhance the natural resources the Grand Canyon National Park--as required by the Grand Canyon Protection Act. Our challenge now is to see that the good intentions and lofty goals of the law are matched by our actions to implement it.
Mr. President, overflights, air quality, Colorado River protection, are just a few of the challenges we still confront.
The world is a much different place than when Woodrow Wilson signed Senator Ashurst's bill establishing Grand Canyon National Park. In 1919, its first year as a National Park, the Grand Canyon was visited by just over 100,000 people, and operated on a budget of $40,000.
Seventy-five years later, over 5 million people from all over the world visit the Canyon yearly and the Park Service will employ 350 people and spend $12 million to manage the park. Visitation is expected to double within the next 10 years.
Times will continue to change, but our stewardship responsibilities will not. They will only be made more complicated by the growing demand and encroachments of expanding civilization.
We are deciding how the future will look today. The National Park Service is currently crafting the Grand Canyon's General Management Plan which will guide the park into the next century on critical issues such as park user levels, land-use, river management, back country management, services, infrastructure, transportation, staffing and funding, just to name a few.
Wisely, and most appropriately, our laws provide for and encourage public review and participation in park management planning. I hope that all concerned citizens will exercise their rights and responsibility to participate in the process as we debate the management plan and set the course for tomorrow.
The Grand Canyon is a shared resource and we have a shared responsibility to ensure a future for the park that is worthy of its place as the centerpiece of our natural heritage and one of the seven wonders of the world.
The General Management Plan, with its public participation process, will be a particularly constructive forum in which to debate and address the most critical issue facing the Grand Canyon – how to deal with increasing demand for the park and its impact on visitor experience and the canyon environment. There are as many ideas on this topic as there are commentators on the issue.
Some have suggested that controls should be placed on visitation in the near future through a visitor reservation system. Perhaps someday restricting the number of visitors may be necessary to ensure the visitor experience and the canyon environment remain world class. But, I do not believe that we are at that point today.
One of the Prime directives of the National Park Service is to provide for the enjoyment of park resources for the American people. I fear that a reservation system is a burdensome, bureaucratic and premature answer to a problem that lends itself to a less onerous solution.
The primary problem with park crowding is that too many private vehicles clog the roads at certain times of the day and too many people are funnelled into a small section of the park. It seems to me that the money and manpower necessary to implement a reservation system could be used more effectively to alleviate crowding by improving alternative transportation opportunities for visitors. We should give people more opportunity and incentive to park private vehicles outside of the park and use alternative transportation within.
In 1990, Congress ordered the Department of Transportation to conduct a study on alternative modes of transportation within national parks to alleviate crowding and enhance visitor experience. That study will be completed shortly and could offer some valuable and timely alternatives.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the Grand Canyon National Park is over 200 miles long and has five public access roads on the South Rim. In addition to alternative transportation, we should look at ways to disperse visitors by encouraging entry at entrance points other than the main South Rim entrance through Tusayan, where the vast majority of visitors congregate. It seems to me that with proper planning we could disperse visitation more widely and relieve crowding without constructing intrusive or unnecessary development in areas of the park that should remain in as pristine as possible.
The Grand Canyon is a national shrine--a place where people seek solace and inspiration, to see the humbling work of ages and the awesome hand of God--to experience something much greater than themselves. Needing the government's permission to visit the Canyon, is like needing a reservation to go to church. It just isn't in keeping with the spirit of what the Grand Canyon is all about.
All options deserve to be debated by the public through the General Management Planning process and examined in the appropriate environmental studies before we take any steps to implement a reservation system which should be our last, not our first, resort.
Mr. President, the next 75 years at the Grand Canyon will surely be as challenging as the past. Before embarking on his trip to brave the unchartered rapids of the Grand Canyon, John Wesley Powell said, “We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown.. .We have an unknown distance to run; and unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel; we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not." Those words echo from the past echo forth to appropriately describe our own journey into the future--the Great Unknown.
But, like Powell, with courage and determination, we, too, can negotiate the distance with honor and success and bequeath to the next generation a proud canyon legacy that ensures the Grand Cayon will remain "The most sublime spectacle on earth."
On this 75th Anniversary, let's rededicate ourselves, as Theodore Roosevelt admonished, "To keep the canyon for our children and our children's children, and for all who come after us, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see."
I ask unanimous consent that the text of the law creating Grand Canyon National Park be printed at this point in the record.
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