Should Government really be in the business of promoting and subsidising noisy and environmentally harmful motorised speed sports?

This is a question that might well be considered by the Ministry of the Environment, which seems to have had little or no input so far into the recent decision by the Ministry of Community Affairs and Sport to create a permanent facility for motorised speed sports at the airport near Clearwater beach.

While admittedly popular with spectators, it is amazing how rapidly this segment of the sporting community has grown on Bermuda in recent years. Almost every year we hear of some new special interest group being formed or of some new recreational or tourist attraction, featuring powerful engines, speed and noise as their major attributes.

This trend seems to have culminated recently in such extreme and exceptionally un-Bermudian enterprises as the Wildcat tour boat which races tourists around the Island in such a hurry that it seems to fulfil no other purpose than to waste fossil fuel and to kill innocent sea turtles that it encounters accidentally en route; and most recently the 'Monster trucks', whose scale and noise pollution were out of all proportion to Bermuda's tiny land area.

The problems of speed and noise in Bermuda had their origin in that fateful decision of Parliament back in 1946 to allow cars into Bermuda. I expect this decision was the beginning of the end, too, for that valiantly projected image of Bermuda as 'The Isles of Rest'. But it was the concurrent explosion in the use of noisy two-stroke mopeds that have probably contributed most to our gradual and unconscious acceptance of unbelievable levels of noise pollution in our environment and to the general popularity of noisy motorised speed sports among our youth.

For many, speed, power and noise project a macho image, although I have lady friends who assure me that the projected image is most often in inverse ratio to the reality! Tampering with mufflers and pack racing soon became a popular pastime of our restless teens, and although some serious efforts were made through legislation and Police enforcement to counter this at first, the sheer scale of the problem and general disregard for the speed limit and noise abatement laws became overwhelming. The response of Government then became one of appeasement, to try and provide a facility where the proponents of "scrambling" or pack racing could have a legitimate location to let off steam.

Motocross became the first such legitimate speed sport, and its location at the once peaceful Coney Island Park began a process of environmental degradation which has ultimately left that park in a shambles and probably driven tourists at Grotto Bay to distraction with noise pollution on race weekends, not to mention the residents of Ducks Puddle Condos. Ultimately, the main effect of this facility has been to increase the popularity of scrambling — though now more of the off road variety — with illegal scramble tracks springing up on park and private lands all over the Island. Motocross was soon followed by go-karting, as we began to adopt more and more of the extreme resource consuming trends of modern American society. Go-karting was initially accommodated at the paved over end of the US Naval Annex facility where its isolation hardly did anything to reduce noise pollution because of the propensity of sound to carry so easily over water. Residents from Warwick to Somerset suffered noise on weekends during that time.

These terrestrially based sports were almost simultaneously paralleled in the marine environment by the advent of power boat racing in Ferry Reach and its extremely popular outgrowth, the annual 'Around the Island' Powerboat Race.

Racing events, or practices, occur in Ferry Reach on most weekends during the summer. As if the poor residents of St. George's didn't already have enough noise from jet aircraft at the airport, now they have to contend with motorcross on nearby Coney Is. and powerboat racing in Ferry Reach.

But it doesn't end there. For those who can't afford the real thing, the racing of noisy model powerboats; model cars and even model aircraft has also become popular. Most of these model-using sports also take place near the airport at Stocks Harbour and near Clearwater Beach.

And then came the jet skis! Jet skis, or "personal watercraft" as they are euphemistically called, have recently exploded onto the scene as the marine equivalent of our noisy mopeds on land. No single recreational toy has done more to polarise society into two diametrically opposed camps than this inimical invention by the Japanese. People either love them or hate them with a passion!

I suspect that the macho popularity of powerboat racing has done as much to encourage the environmentally inconsiderate racing about on jet skis as motocross has done to encourage environmentally indiscriminate scramble racing of mopeds in our parks.

When we add the noise from all these motorised speed sports to the already high background noise of our grossly amplified outdoor music, heavy construction machinery and our burgeoning motor traffic, which includes the endless wailing of sirens as ambulances and police cars race to deal with traffic accidents, and periodically even a sightseeing helicopter, it is hard to deny that Bermuda has become one of the noisiest places in the world!

So why should the Ministry of the Environment be concerned? The answer is that all of these motorised speed sports have the following deleterious environmental impacts in common: First and foremost, they are all incredibly noisy, making a complete mockery of our feeble and seldom enforced noise pollution laws. The noise from motocross, go-karting and powerboat racing can carry at an annoyingly distracting level for as much as two miles beyond its origin! Thus, given the tiny land area of Bermuda, this noise pollution can affect as much as one-sixth of our population at any one time!

Moreover, excessive or prolonged exposure to noise has been shown to increase stress levels in human beings and may well be a contributory cause to violence in society. There have certainly been times when I felt like... Well, enough said! Noise is by far the most important factor resulting in public complaints about these sports and the main reason for the NIMBY (not in my back yard) objections to Government's efforts to find a suitable venue for them.

Secondly, all of these sports impact on our environment in other ways that should be a cause for concern:

Direct impacts by motorcross bikes and other off road vehicles are massive erosion of soil and even rock. They are also extremely disruptive to birds and other wildlife when operated in off road areas just as snowmobiles are when operated in America's parklands in winter. Powerboats and jet skis operated at speed are now the leading cause of sea turtle mortality in Bermuda. Turtles have to come to the surface to breathe at intervals and it is at that critical moment that they are in danger of being hit by fast boats. While amazingly quick to take evasive action, they are not quick enough to evade boats approaching on a collision course in excess of 30 miles per hour. Most recreational boats these days are routinely equipped to travel at speeds in excess of that. It is sobering to contemplate that these creatures, which have been around for more than 60 million years, never had to deal with this new threat to their existence before the 20th Century and only at a significant level since the 1980s!

Indirect impacts are less obvious and of less immediate concern to our political leaders and to the public in general, but they are no less insidious in the long-run. Firstly, nearly all of the engines used in these sports are of the highly polluting two-stroke type, which release significant amounts of un-combusted hydrocarbons into the environment (and for which reason, incidentally, Government is presently considering measures for phasing them out in favour of four-strokes). This pollution has most impact on the marine environment where its effects on our coral reef community — like that of the anti-fouling paints we use on those same water craft — are only just beginning to be recognised.

Secondly, high-powered engines operated at high speeds for prolonged periods use excessive amounts of fuel and oil, and are making a disproportionate contribution to the problem of global warming through increased carbon emissions. This is all the more shameful because the source is recreational, rather than essential-use.

We might rationalise that Bermuda's total contribution, on the global scale, is insignificant, but given our excessively high material standard of living and resource consumption rates, our relative contribution, per capita, is extremely high and ought to be a matter of concern, if only to help with our balance of payments. The cold reality is that our present oil-based global economy is non-sustainable even from a relatively short term perspective, and that we are going to have to transition to any economy based on renewable resources more rapidly than we realise at present. I suspect, however, that Bermuda won't take its portion of collective global responsibility in this matter seriously until our airport submerges due to rising sea level.

So where does all of this leave us? It is painfully obvious that Bermuda has adopted, hook, line and sinker, some of the worst excesses of the over-consumptive, fossil fuel burning western industrial society, manifested at its worst extreme by the United States of America. It is also obvious that motorised speed sports are becoming increasingly popular and attract considerable spectator attention, which may even extend to a portion of our tourist visitor population and consequently be used as a justification for Government support. But for every visitor we attract for this reason we will be driving an even larger number away due to noise pollution. Government would do much better to subsidise that long overdue recent initiative to build a sail training ship specifically for Bermuda, because it is more in keeping with the Bermuda image as still promoted by tourism and more in line with our renewable energy future.

I am not suggesting that Government should dictate our personal choices in recreation. Nor do I expect that the new fads of motorised speed sports are going to go away, even though Bermuda is fundamentally too small to accommodate them without major environmental impacts. I do however expect Government to protect us from their most environmentally damaging effects. There is absolutely no reason that I can see, why Government should be expected to subsidise them, because they are so popular with spectators that they should easily be able to fund themselves through sponsors who benefit from promotional advertising, and through spectator gate receipts. At most, Government should confine its support to subsidising solutions to the environmental problems that they cause, and then enforcing these solutions! Why, for example, should these sports be totally exempt from our noise pollution standards? There have been huge advances in the field of noise abatement technology and silencers in recent years. Why can't we require our motorised speed sports to be different, in recognition of Bermuda's space limitations and crowding, and require efficient silencers for all our motorised sports including jet skis? I know this would not be macho and that the various groups would all argue on grounds that it would slow the machines (or even compromise safety!), but at least they would all be equally handicapped. and if this did not fly there is always the option of state of the art sound barriers. One additional advantage of a sound barrier is that is could also function as a screen to provide better control over spectators for gathering gate receipts. A sound barrier, while expensive, would work most effectively at that extensive level site proposed for a motor sports centre on apron five of the airport. Enforcement of one, or both of these steps could well defuse the major cause of public objection to these sports and might also help to resolve the inevitable conflict resulting from the proposal to locate the motor sports facility near Clearwater Beach and Coopers Island — the one place in Bermuda with the greatest potential for a passive recreational park and nature reserve away from traffic and most sources of noise.

|0x95|David Wingate is the former Government Conservation Officer and is one of Bermuda's leading environmentalists.