After a court ordered the federal government to follow its own law that says it needs to have formal plans to curb disruption from helicopter and plane tours over national parks, the National Park Service is asking what the public has to say about air tours over Haleakala and Hawaii Volcanoes national parks.

For years, residents on Maui and Hawaii island have raised alarms about the buzzing choppers and the disruption they cause in neighborhoods and natural areas. Eventually, a group of Big Island residents fed up with the noise — called Hawaii Island Coalition Malama Pono, or HICoP — teamed up with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit that provides free legal services to push governments to follow their own environmental laws.

The two groups sued the Federal Aviation Administration and National Park Service, saying they hadn’t been following the National Parks Air Tour Management Act of 2000 — a federal law that says the two agencies need to work together to come up with plans to limit aircraft noise and disturbances over national parks that see more than 50 flights above them each year.

“In 20 years, they haven’t developed a single plan — that’s unreasonable delay,” said Jeff Ruch, the Pacific director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

In 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia agreed with the residents and ordered the federal agencies to put together plans for two dozen parks by August 2022. But after a year and a half of the agencies telling the court they’d make the deadline, Ruch said the FAA recently announced it was running behind schedule and wouldn’t be finished by then with plans for eight parks — many of which deal with the most air traffic, including Haleakala and Hawaii Volcanoes.

“Hawaii is ground zero for abusive overflights,” Ruch said. “Your congressional delegation has sort of been up in arms, but they’ve been powerless to do anything because the law that’s supposed to protect the parks and the public has never been enforced.”

Over the years, U.S. Rep. Ed Case has tried to rein in the helicopter tour industry, but his proposed legislation hasn’t moved forward. After re-introducing a bill to further regulate tours last year, Case said that the FAA and the helicopter industry “have been operating under an unacceptable status quo for decades and are very resistant to change.”

Even Blue Hawaiian, one of the state’s busiest helicopter tour companies, said it’s supportive of the community’s effort to better regulate the industry, but it doesn’t think that getting rid of flights altogether is the best path forward.

“Much of the beauty of our national parks may only be experienced from the sky,” said the company’s president, Quentin Koch, in a statement. “For people who are not physically able to hike 20 miles into a crater or in lava fields, air tours are the only way to experience the parks.”

As part of the initial process to put together the plans, the National Park Service and the FAA are currently asking for the public’s feedback about proposals for Hawaii Volcanoes and Haleakala national parks. The federal law allows the agencies to regulate all sightseeing flights that travel within 5,000 feet of the ground level and within a half-mile of parks’ boundaries; it doesn’t allow them to control flights above 5,000 feet.

In recent years, there have usually been about 4,800 air tours over Haleakala annually and anywhere from 8,000 to 16,500 over Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, according to the National Park Service. In a draft proposal, the park service outlines three main paths it can take for each park: do nothing and continue allowing the current level of flights in parks; bar all flights within the parks’ boundaries; or limit flights to specific routes.

In the drafts, however, the agency says that keeping the current volume of air tours is “inconsistent” with the National Park Service’s mission, which includes protecting sacred cultural areas, preventing harm to wildlife and educating visitors.

Jin Prugsawan, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service, said the park is required to list all potential options as part of the planning process, even though it’s not planning to expand the number of flights. For now, it wants to learn more from residents about possible concerns that might’ve been missed in the draft plans.

This is the first step in a long process that could include revising plans based on public feedback and undergoing a lengthy environmental review that requires government agencies to weigh the potential effects of their decisions before making them.

“The main objective is to think about what are the things that we are trying to protect,” said Prugsawan, adding that concerns could span from the disruption of peace and quiet in the crater to harm to wildlife.

The park service is asking residents to share “substantive” comments by April 1 — and says in the draft that comments that just support one option or another without explaining their position “are not considered substantive.” But some Maui residents are raising concerns, saying that could make it harder for people to share their thoughts.

“I think this makes it very difficult for the public to engage,” said Albert Perez, executive director of the Maui Tomorrow Foundation. “If people just want to say, ‘I don’t want any helicopters up there,’ it’s unclear to me that that is going to be a valued comment.”

Perez, who studied the helicopter noise in the Haleakala crater as a graduate student in the 1980s, said the effort to regulate helicopters has been sorely needed for decades. He got involved with the issue almost 40 years ago after he was hiking through Haleakala and a helicopter swooped overhead, so low that it reverberated through the crater.

But now that the federal government is finally taking action, he’s worried that the process isn’t as accessible as it should be: for example, residents aren’t allowed to submit comments by email — they have to fill out the park service’s online form or send comments by mail.

The park service’s request for public feedback comes at a time when aircraft noise and disruption is in sharp focus in Maui County. Two county council members recently drafted proposals to urge the FAA to better regulate helicopter tours and create an avenue for community members to voice their concerns, Maui Now reported recently. A community group is also in the process of drafting a proposal to pressure the FAA to change its flight paths, which currently send planes booming over Haiku.

“I never would have thought that we would have to work against our own government agency,” said Cheryl Hendrickson, of Quiet Skies Maui.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.

Read the National Park Service’s proposals for Haleakala and Hawaii Volcanoes parks below.