Concern amplifies over loudness of Aspen Palm Tree Music Festival impacting wildlife

The Aspen Palm Tree Music Festival made its debut in Aspen in February 2023 and has played two concerts so far at Rio Grande Park — only half a mile from the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) at Hallam Lake, a year-round nature preserve.

But the noise has become an issue.

“We’re not against music,” said Chris Lane, CEO of ACES. “We’re not against concerts. We’re just against extremely loud noises violating this nature preserve. It’s a preserve, and it’s a respite; it’s a sanctuary for wildlife.”

The festival is produced by Belly Up Aspen and the Goldberg family and is a two-day, outdoor concert. The event is capped at 100 decibels, around the volume of a bulldozer or loud motorcycle, and is scheduled to end by 10 p.m. The speakers historically have faced east toward the Hallam Lake nature preserve. 

On Tuesday, Aspen City Council voted 3-2 to approve a five-year park lease for the festival at Rio Grande Park. Both Mayor Torre and Council member John Doyle voted “No”; Torre recommended moving the event to Buttermilk. Council member Ward Hauenstein, Doyle, and Torre were in favor of turning the venue away from Hallam Lake, though. 

The Goldbergs could not address repositioning but were open to the idea of it. The idea of positioning the stage toward Hallam Lake was to mitigate the noise heading toward the residents west of Rio Grande Park. 

“I think that the positives outweigh the negatives, but I just would like to see the possibility of sound checks and stage orientation if it could be in a way that would be less impactful for some,” Hauenstein said.

The Goldbergs aim to minimize noise pollution and complaints from the event by having monitoring stations for the sound level around the event. Staff still received around 10 noise complaints each year. 

The event was supposed to be capped at 100 decibels, which is around the volume of a construction site. However, an actual construction site about 250 feet from ACES was nearly inaudible from the visitors center. 

“If a construction site’s 100 (decibels), then that concert’s well over 100,” Lane said. “I did speak with the city manager, Sara Ott, afterwards, and we’re going to try to monitor it better. But I highly, highly doubt that it’s under 100 decibels.”

According to the National Parks Service (NPS), higher levels of human-caused sound in an organism’s environment can lead to changing behavior patterns, difficulty mating, and it can heavily influence predator-prey relationships. A five decibel increase in background noise can decrease a predator’s ability to hear prey by up to 70%. Loud noise has also been proven to increase heart rate and breathing in animals and insects.

“One study in Australia that did several different categories of animals — amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish, arthropods — and they studied the effects of loud sounds on the animals, and it had detrimental effects,” Lane said. “So we hypothesized that if you’re a moose, a mountain lion, an elk, a deer, or if you’re the waterfowl that are here during the winter, that that noise is certainly, on the low end, obstructive, scary, and causes anxiety and stress.”

ACES runs kids camps and community lectures year round and serves as a way to educate children on the environment.

“We’re here for the community,” Lane said. “This place has been here for 55 years, much longer than a concert series, so we need to protect that.”