In 2001, the National Park Service banned noxious jet-skis at the Cape Cod National Seashore, one of the most spectacular beaches in the northeast. The Wilderness Society and other conservation organizations worked hard for the decision and applauded it. But we may have to defend the ban again as efforts to reverse it continue.

They Just Don't Belong Here
Jet-skis (or "personal water craft," as they are euphemistically called to blunt their reputation as marauding thrill machines) don't belong in Cape Cod National Seashore. That was the decision of the National Park Service (NPS) in 2001.

Why? The NPS wrote a bill of particulars on the machines: they cause "considerable threats to estuarine flora and fauna; pollute water essential to commercial and recreational shellfishing in the park; pose unacceptable risk of injury to operators and bystanders; conflict with the majority of other longstanding uses of the Seashore; and are an inappropriate use of the Seashore since PWC (personal water craft) noise intrusion is inconsistent with the intent that the Seashore be a place of refuge from noisy urban environments." With these findings in hand, the Superintendent of the Seashore banned jet-skis there. Shortly afterwards, several surrounding communities banned jet-skis as well.

About Cape Cod Seashore
The Congress established Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961. Its beaches are known as some of the most spectacular in the northeast. But there is more to this place on the easternmost tip of Massachusetts: ponds, marshes, bays, pine barrens, inlets and dunes. The Seashore preserves a 40-mile stretch of beach along the Atlantic and habitat for 64 threatened and endangered species.

And now, with the jet-ski ban -- if we can keep it -- there is quiet, broken only by natural sounds.

Where It Stands
The jet-ski industry sought in the last Congress to overturn the ban. It got its bill through one committee of the House but no further. The industry will be back, though, in the new and increasingly anti-environmental Congress. Conservationists are organizing to defend the ban, knowing that science ought to be enough to keep it in place. But knowing, too, that given the reversal of the Yellowstone snowmobile ban that also rested on definitive science, too, the battle is likely to be a tough one.