A representative excerpt from Congressional Hearings on the overflight issue held in St. George, Utah last September. Congressman John Ensign of Nevada is interrogating Jeri Ledbetter, who is speaking on behalf of the Sierra Club…

mr. ensign. I guess my question may be to each one of you on the panel: what is acceptable? How many flights are acceptable over the Grand Canyon? What is acceptable to maybe the different groups that are here? How many flights a day?

ms. ledbetter. The number of flights in 1987 was deemed inappropriate. That is why the Overflights Act was passed in the first place.

mr. ensign. By whom deemed them inappropriate?
ms. ledbetter. By Congress.

mr. ensign. Okay. So is Congress…

ms. ledbetter. That is why they passed the Overflights Act, was because the amount of noise was deemed inappropriate.

mr. ensign. In other words, what they proposed, is that acceptable or do we need to go farther than that?

ms. ledbetter. I would say pre-1987 levels because that number was already too many.

mr. ensign. Pre-1987.

ms. ledbetter. Yes.

mr. ensign. So 1986 is okay.

ms. ledbetter. Not necessarily, but I think that that is a good place to start.

mr. ensign. What I am saying is: has the Sierra Club sat down and said, “This is what we think would be acceptable”? In other words, if we get to one point, are we there or have we got to go farther?

ms. ledbetter. I do not think that you can say that a certain number of flights a day is acceptable or unacceptable. You know, we have been involved in this process for a long period of time. What we have now is definitely unacceptable.

mr. ensign. To you, not to some other people.

ms. ledbetter. Well, you asked the question.