stuff morning on the news media please the court my name is paula deen or stein i and i am representing the petitioners in this case public employees for environmental responsibility or peer for short and the hawaii island coalition  opponent so twenty years ago congress passed a law the national parks air tour management act that was intended to either mitigate or avoid the adverse impacts of air tours on national park cultural and natural values and visitor experience the law was passed to benefit exactly the type of people we represent people who use the parks for recreation the bird watcher hikers the photographers and also people with businesses in the parks who we also represent who have erred who have ground to businesses who have environmental education businesses in one case a soundscape recorder and these people d have been seriously harmed by the twenty year delay in implementing this act we have people who are seeking under sterve experiences of nature and wildlife and they're not getting them we have people who are in some of these parks where there's a very high volume of air tours or in other parks where there's kind of a moderate version like hawaii parks hawaii volcano's hollioake a law have a very high volume work year round you're good in a high volume other parks like place your national park for instance may have a more moderate total of air tours but they're concentrated in two or three months near the summer and these people are having airplanes fly over them every fifteen minutes at low altitudes in the very significant amount of noise we have people who in their declarations have said they hike two or three days to get to a very remote area where they're expecting an experience of nature and natural sounds and they're being buzzed by helicopters we have people who have said that they're seeing helicopters fly right up to a cliff and spook the wildlife we have people with businesses in the parks who are doing tours and environmental education who are saying that their customers are not getting the experience they they're looking for a quiet natural environment because of these air tours  in till this case was brought the agencies had done virtually nothing there are two parks in the entire country out of the twenty five dollars that are now subject to the act that have voluntary agreements there are none that have aired to management plans now the government's the agency's response is that they have been working on this they have competing priorities and limited resources there's only so much that can be done now typically we give a lot of difference to the agency when they are identifying their priorities and when they tell us we just don't have the resources to deal with what i see that this is this is kind of a different case in that regard in that the agencies are telling you that they've spent lots of resources on this that twenty five million dollars just noise studies alone they spent between two thousand and three in twenty thousand one hundred and eighteen years working on six steen air tour management plans which they then abandoned they then spent seven years working on only voluntary agreements which they now admit was always doomed to failure because people are not going to enter voluntary agreements when they can simply continue without restrictions to use their interim operating authority so i don't think this is a case where the problem is limited resources or competing priorities this is a case where lots of resources have been put into this problem but in the record for now i understand that but my perception of what is going on is that you have two agencies the national park service whose mission is to protect park resources and visitor experience and then you have the f a a and their mission is supposed to be air safety there's inherently no reason why they should be incompatible you can restrict flights you can reduce flights you can mitigate their impacts without impacting air safety but for some reason the two agent the f a a has been unwilling to say to the park service go ahead protect your resources and not just look at safety they're saying we have to look at everything we want to do environmental review the way we want to do it and as a result they've had a stalemate and they haven't come out with any plans now they are telling the court that even though the reason the supposedly reason that they couldn't do this in the past was  differing missions of the agencies which as i said i don't think is really true but now they are telling the court that but now we're on track you know we're going to overcome these we're going to we got together we talked about it we're going to work it out and why some why shouldn't we critic plan right and we're starting on it why should so now we need to look at the plan that they have out of the twenty three dollars parks that he plans their plan only cover seven so and there's no even target dates for the rest of them which include six out of the seven in our petition and sixteen out of twenty three dollars in the whole system so they don't have a plan for that it doesn't assure within any time that those other parts will be done the plan that they have has already slipped you know there are two parts where they were supposed to have come up with a voluntary agreement for public comment at the end of october and those are death valley and mt rainier and as the agency submitted in a in a twenty eight dollars they weren't able to meet that deadline because the operators didn't like what the partner what had proposed for their own very plans and so now they're going to have to go back and try to make it more palatable to the operators and they admit that that might not work at all that they might have to go to an heir to a management plan which is which is not voluntary and they do not even have a substitute target date for those parks so we're now in a position where there is no schedule and because they're saying that these are all dependent on each other and if they're not going to move ahead with other parks until they finish or at least under certain milestones in some parks this is going to throw the whole schedule back in addition in the seven parks they  picked are all except what makes you think that if we granted the writ of mandamus that anything would be different i think that something would be different because they would be under a court order to do something the only reason that you can come up with this plan was because we brought in this case no now they know they have to do something but they have tried i think to convince the court that you should stay your hand based on a plan that isn't really a plan that doesn't apply to very many parks that has already slipped that applies to two parks that don't even have their tours you know they've picked the low hanging fruit and if it's going to take them two and a half years to do these seven parks then i'm just curious is could his congress express any interest in this of late congress amended the act in two thousand and twelve excuse me and at that time they added the possibility of voluntary plans but they didn't take away the the court shouldn't do anything because there is no congressional action however you know under the a p a this court has a duty to compel agency action and recently delayed and there is not an expectation that you know the court won't do anything just because congress hasn't come back and said hey you're not implementing our law they are not congress has a lot of things to do they mean i get around to that for everything every law they passed but this court has the obligation to extraordinary relief of mandamus does apply to a reasonable delay and they set out factors for figuring out when it does apply and they have the court your court has not withheld relief simply because congress hasn't come back and tried to do something about the fact that the that the law they passed is not the implemented network nine years is unreasonable in nature versus f c c this court said that nine years should be enough time for an agency to do just about anything in three or communications is six years chemical workers six years and then where there is a threat to human health as in the case of public citizen versus which there isn't here correct hardly there isn't here right there is is not here such a threat right there is not you know we're not i mean this is not you're not claiming that and we're not claiming this is not comparable to your box of chemical but in that case you know they found that three years was too much you know there's never been a case that has found this kind of delay to be except of all you know we're not absolutely tied to the statute says that there was an expectation that they would make every effort to put out these plans within two years you know we're not actual absolutely tied for a remedy two to two years that's what's in the statute that certainly could be the remedy what do you think a reasonable remedy would be i think you know i think that if they if we could work out or the court could work out with the parties the remedy that was maybe four years or five years i mean we wouldn't object to that but why would they be doing to what two the remedy being four years and or five years instead of two but what we really need is  you know a court deadline and forceable court deadline because given the history given even what they're doing now in the way it's already slipping i don't think there's any guarantee that we wouldn't be here ten years from now in pretty much the same position if there weren't what do we have a do we have an in rape or a lab's problem here in other words if if we were to grant mandamus relief and say three years or something would be would the agency just have to turn its attention to the plans you want as opposed to the ones you're working on in other words would it change with just you've got i think the language that was used in rape or lead with jumped the line right right so where is that a risk here no we're not asking to jump the line no but isn't that the consequence i'm asking whether that would be the consequence i think that it is has worked issues a remedy yeah we brought our case about seven parks because that's where we had injured members but if this court issues a remedy i think it should apply to all twenty three parks that don't have plans or agreements we're not asking to be put in high school like are not asking for you know good order of things  good morning you may please the court erik grant for the respondent federal agencies i'm not here this morning to defend nineteen years and that's good good i am good here it's a good start but i am here to respectfully remind the court to precepts including one that your honor judge table mentioned the bar laboratories case about reordering agency priority would that happen here it would your honor  all i'm sorry but if our order for order applied to all parks all seventeen then there wouldn't be any real hurry right we're on or what i would like to do is make a pitch for our september th submission our implementation would language the agencies already violated right your honor we have not met all of the target dates we explained in it's another way to put it correct it is another way to put  rather we explain in our rule twenty a j filing on friday some of the challenges that we faced with the year two operators there and the steps that we are taking to get back on what we think is a reasonable schedule and  what's the best way for we've done more than just give us a single date that's several years out your honor in our september th filing beginning on page nineteen we have let's start with that what's the date what's the outer limit we're going to skip down there are many dates your honor we described it's seven parks and talk about twenty three the congress has told you to do something in twenty three parts how much the next line would be at least prepared to say we can get it done by x but you're not here you can't do that i'm a lawyer they were here then so i guess we have to decide that you help us or your clients put us in a tough position because you know if you say you're not to defend the one thousand years but most agencies the faces they come back with something you know basically what you what your agency has said is we're going to do our best to do these seven in in two years or so and then those will be models for the rest and there's no the agency's given the court nothing to grab on to hear you said will apply lessons word in the seven parks to subsequent parks i'm reading the language while the agencies are not yet in a position to specify with certainty when the next partly done they will consider the selection factors and apply lessons learned the agency gives the court nothing you don't give us anything to to say ok we don't have to agree to his relief because we have an agency here that's actually not only trying to do it but it's finally set up a schedule that is meaningful you just haven't given us with respect your honor i just disagree that the agency said given you nothing again beginning on page nineteen of that submission there is a plan with multiple dates for multiple parks covering a rd of the remaining twenty three parks and as your honor pointed out it's the agency's position that those the lessons learned from those would allow the agencies to complete the entire statutory mandate of all twenty three parks it's certainly not the agency's position that only we we need only do seven we need to do them all because this is one of congress's statutory mandates but we are and implementing other statutory mandates as your honor why well maybe we get here what's your explanation for how we got here in one thousand years later we saw what happened we described on pages seven through sixteen of our brief the efforts that  in which the agencies and gauged over the past couple of decades and while those did not bear fruit in more than two parks we submit respectfully that those did give us a base to  my colleague on the other side explained these are two agencies with different missions congress congress knew that when it said two years it said the f a a in cooperation with the with congressman in may have known that your honor but congress crafted what we think is certainly a distinctive if not a unique statute that requires two agencies with different missions to agree on complex decisions including an environmental review under the national environmental policy act has the agency ever thought about maybe going back to congress it was ten years ago to go back and say to congress or we're doing our best you told us to have for years we're not even close please give us more years and more money or get the park service out of it or something i mean did you has that ever been done competitor with respect i would disagree with your promise about the two years as my colleague on the other side conceded i think that particular statutory provision uses the phrase what's to review your honor under the mandate of this statute we are required to follow the national environmental policy act and in you know looking forward and setting like a pretty simple environmental impact parks with different kinds of vegetation which affects noise there are different geographic areas there are parks that involve tribal consultation there are parks with very  high judge griffith has mentioned the parks with low numbers there are parks with very high numbers including the badlands and mount rushmore which are the st two at the top of the list on our september th plan so  it's it's it's not a perfect world but the f a a is in charge of the nation's air safety which encompasses forty four thousand dollars flights a day two million seven hundred thousand dollars passengers a day a one billion passengers a year and for its part the national park service administers four hundred dollars areas throughout the nation comprising eighty five million acres and and handling three hundred and thirty million visitors so we're doing other things well we have we need to do this and we will do it i would completely understand that you can't answer the question about the ask you but as counsel to the agent but suppose we said look this is this is going on too long based on our case law and the record in this case we think we need to grant mandamus we need to come up with a date plaintiffs just told us the petition has just told us they'd be happy with for five years what do you think about that respectfully your honor i think the better course would be for us to continue on this existing plan and report back to the court in some reasonable time like six months and for the court to be i i hope and expect to be satisfied at that time that we're on a path and that we will be continuing on that path and yet get the st rd done before we get on to the on to the   rd to as my colleague said to pick the low hanging fruit and then go on to the higher hanging fruit to walk before we run but i think respectfully just picking a date whether it's near or far is not going to be the solution to this very difficult problem and while i can understand the court's skepticism with the agencies again we've not done nothing and even even before this particular petition for review was filed we've started we started work again and that's laid out in the  the national the associate director of the national park service raymond savvy in our september th submissions that we've started work we're on our way and so with respect we would ask the board to  give us a chance to get those things under our belt and some reasonable time i respectfully suggest six months would would be the way to accomplish that try to be brief so they said that all the work they've done in the past gave them a base we asked them to use that base and move quickly and that they can commit to a time a definite time when they talk about agencies not being able to cooperate underneath in fact underneath the agencies cooperate all the time the regulations include having a lead agency in a cooperating agency just as there is here and they have to oftentimes also cooperate with tribes local governments and we have lots of cases where their cooperation has led to huge delays happens all the time but that hasn't stopped the cord from insisting that something get done eventually that is not a reason to say that there should be no deadline and we don't think that coming back in six months and reporting progress is really going to be enough here under the circumstances we think the court needs to given time maybe we should say all deliber