Pointing to the National Park Service's own testing as evidence, National Parks Conservation Association officials are criticizing a proposed winter-use plan for Yellowstone National Park, saying testing shows snowmobiles have gotten dirtier and noiser, not cleaner and quieter.
In pointing to the park's Yellowstone Over-snow Vehicle Emission Tests – 2012: Preliminary Report, NPCA officials say the trend to dirtier and noiser snowmobiles the past six years "contradicts the snowmobile industry’s repeated promises to make cleaner snowmobiles and keep unhealthy gasses such as carbon monoxide, benzene and formaldehyde from fouling the air of the country’s oldest national park."
The report explains that scientists tested 2011-model snowmobiles in Yellowstone and compared their emissions with 2006 models made by the same companies, NPCA noted in a release.
"One manufacturer’s newer snowmobile emitted over 20 times more carbon monoxide than its earlier model. Another company’s newer model had higher emissions of every exhaust gas sampled, including 5 times more hydrocarbons," the release said.
The report concludes: “The model change in snowmobiles has not been a positive influence on air quality based on the emission data.”
In releasing the park's Draft Supplement Winter-Use Environmental Impact Statement earlier this month, Superintendent Dan Wenk said his proposal to allow up to 480 snowmobiles a day in Yellowstone, more than twice the average entries of recent winters, would make the park “cleaner and quieter.”
However, the National Park Service’s own studies contradict that assertion, the NPCA release said. "That document shows the proposed plan would increase snowmobile noise and pollution in Yellowstone National Park with significantly greater emissions of carbon monoxide and cancer-causing gasses such as formaldehyde and benzene," the park advocacy group said.
“Rewarding a technology that is going backward and getting dirtier is the very opposite of stewardship that Americans expect and deserve in Yellowstone National Park,” said Tom Kiernan, NPCA president. “After 10 years of pledging to make major improvements to emissions and noise, the snowmobile industry has gone back on its promise to the National Park Service and the public."
The emissions study looked at “recent additions to the snowcoach fleet” and concluded: “emissions are generally lower for newer snowcoaches compared to mean values of the earlier fleet and especially compared to the older carbureted engine snowcoaches.”
Indeed, specific data provided in the report show that current snowcoaches are up to 50 times cleaner than current models of “Best Available Technology” snowmobiles when the vehicles’ carbon monoxide emissions are calculated on a per-visitor basis. In per-visitor emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, the report shows snowcoaches are 2-5 times cleaner than snowmobiles. The report reflects that these air-quality advantages of snowcoaches are expected to become even more significant when Yellowstone requires all snowcoaches to utilize newer engines.
“The National Park Service should make an immediate U-turn on this misguided policy. After all, the growing majority of Yellowstone Park’s visitors prefer multi-passenger snow coaches, which are demonstrably cleaner than snowmobiles, which are getting dirtier. Even park officials have acknowledged that,” said Chuck Clusen, director of the National Park Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The only obvious and responsible path forward is to facilitate the use of snow coaches, not snowmobiles.”
Comments
I have to clarify a comment that imtnbke made about the snowmobiles in Yellowstone. Let it be clear that the snowmobiles are only allowed to operate on the same roads that automobiles travel in the park and nothing more. They do not travel cross country in the park and currently they have a guide that they have to follow wherever they go. If you designated the roads as Wilderness are they really Wilderness? Also if that happens every single automobile that normally travel the park in the summer months would then also be eliminated. Yellowstone is about trying to reduce impacts in the park but also a Wilderness designation would eliminate some management options they have currently.
Now about the electric snowmobiles just aren't feasible. Take the Chevy Volt which has had millions of dollars of research and currently a $7500 tax incentive which the snowmobile manufacturers can't possibly match. It has an EPA distance of 35 miles before it needs recharged. Old Faithful is just over 30 miles one way from West Yellowstone and the Chevy Volt couldn't even make the entire loop without a recharge. Add tracks and travel on snow and the Chevy Volt's mileage would be cut in half to 18 miles making it not even be able to travel to Old Faithful without a recharge when traveling on snow. That is why I don't think an electric snowmobile is possible when you add in the extreme cold which is hard on batteries also.
Kurt -assuming your ppm calculations are correct, can you document that the 1.7 level has any more detrimental impact on the park than the 1.2 level?
It seems reasonable to me that snowmobiles should be allowed to use Yellowstone's roads during the winter. Why not, especially if Common Sense is correct that it's only 300 during the entire winter? Even if it's 100 a day, would that be so bad, given the size of Yellowstone's road network? The idea of walling off as much of America as possible to as many Americans as possible is politically untenable in the long term, notwithstanding that the proponents of this idea embrace it and try to enforce it with notable vigor.
YNP4everyone is correct that an area containing a road, by definition, cannot be designated as Wilderness. There are, however, certain exceptions to this rule that highlight the absurdities surrounding federal agencies' misinterpretations of the Wilderness Act of 1964. For example, I hear that the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness in California has big dirt roads that cattle ranchers use to cart around cattle in trucks to their grazing meadows deep inside the Wilderness, which they no doubt trample, defoliate, and generally trash. A bicyclist found on these same roads, however, theoretically could be cited for the dastardly public offense of having a bicycle in a Wilderness. I think the Wilderness within Point Reyes National Park also has a bunch of dirt roads for the same purposes. Cattle and trucks yes, bicycles no. The ironies abound.
Common sense makes a good argument. I can't see how 300 snowmobiles do more damages than 1000s of cars and trucks.
Zeb, that's what the scientists have said in the past....
Unless they're waking up hibernating bears, it's hard to see how the 300 snowmobilers could be disturbing anything. And if they are doing that, why are they allowed now? If it all comes down to air pollution, I'd like to hear the scientists to whom Kurt refers explain why they're worse than the, what, 20,000?, SUVs, pick-up trucks, Winnebagos, and non-smog-controlled 1960s-era Chevrolet Impalas and Ford Falcons that drive through every week. (OK, I'll admit there probably aren't too many of the latter that show up. Indeed, it's been a while since I've seen either a Maverick, a Gremlin, a Pacer, or a Vega.)
There's more to the Yellowstone snowmobile controversy than emissions. Here's a summary of the history (through 2006 anyway) that turned up at my fingertips with a simple internet search -- try it and see what else you can find.
http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/yellowstone/snowmobiles.html
For those wondering how winter emissions can be worse than summer, here's a story from Traveler's archives that explains that....
/2009/08/studies-show-summer-traffic-yellowstone-national-park-not-polluting-snowmobiles-winter