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.
