Cover story: Quiet! Woodside is the latest town to draft a noise ordinance to protect residents from the everyday din -- but do noise laws work? Cover story: Quiet! Woodside is the latest town to draft a noise ordinance to protect residents from the everyday din -- but do noise laws work? (February 04, 2004)

By Andrea Gemmet

Almanac Staff Writer

Over a year ago, the Woodside Town Council's festive December meeting was interrupted by a resident who was so upset she was nearly in tears. Her family was being assaulted at all hours by the loud, profanity-laced rehearsals of a neighbor's garage band. Couldn't the council do anything to help?

With no substantive laws regulating noise on the books, there wasn't much anyone could do, so council members were moved to take up that thorny piece of legislation known as the noise ordinance, and last month, introduced a law that would limit the hours of construction and power-tool use, two of the prime offenders. A catch-all prohibition against excessive noise emanating past property lines would protect residents from the potty-mouth garage band and its ilk.

Even if Woodside's ordinance gets a second vote of approval when it comes back to the council later this month, it will come a little too late for the desperate resident -- she and her family moved out ... and so did their neighbors with the raucous band, said Councilman Joe Putnam.

Although the people who inspired the legislation may be gone, there is no shortage of auditory insults -- and the people who are annoyed by them -- in local towns.

There are the usual suspects -- barking dogs, noisy parties, roaring jet planes and thundering freight trains.

Then there are the not-so-usual noisemakers -- crowing roosters in the suburbs, screeching peacocks in Woodside, the crash of skateboards in Atherton. For the truly sensitive, playing children, droning foghorns and migrating birds can make life unbearably noisy. Once, someone even called the Menlo Park police to complain that there were aliens on the roof making too much noise, said Cmdr. Greg Rothaus.

But one of the single biggest sources of complaints, from Portola Valley to Menlo Park, is construction noise. The economy may not be what it once was, but there are still plenty of projects, from demolitions to remodeling, going on all over the Midpeninsula. Woodside is poised to join neighboring towns that regulate noise by restricting construction to certain hours and protecting residents from hearing chainsaws at the crack of dawn and jackhammering late at night.
Woodside's plan

Woodside's restrictions wouldn't be quite as stringent as those in Atherton and Portola Valley -- the two towns don't allow any commercial construction on weekends. Woodside would permit commercial construction on Saturdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., as well as from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on weekdays. In the proposed Woodside law, garden power tools, such as the ubiquitous leaf blower, share the same hours as commercial construction, with the exception being Saturdays, when they are verboten before 10 a.m.

Woodside residents working on their own properties would face looser restrictions: quitting time would be at 6 p.m. on weekdays and Saturdays, and if they want to mow, blow, hammer or hack on Sundays and holidays, they could do so between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Finding a balance

But what hours are reasonable hours? Do residents want peace and quiet by dinnertime or do they want to be able to come home from work and spend a long summer evening doing home-improvement projects? Woodside Councilwoman Carroll Ann Hodges, who said she spends evenings chopping firewood and building furniture and frames, called an earlier proposal to end residents' construction after 5:30 p.m. and ban it completely on Sundays "draconian."

"I can't believe I'm the only do-it-yourselfer," she said at the January 13 council meeting. "I can't imagine not being able to work on Sundays and not after 5:30 p.m. in the summer when it's still light out."

Residents working on their own remodeling projects rely on holidays and evenings to get things done, said Councilman Pete Sinclair.

Councilman Dave Tanner, who lives in the Glens, one of Woodside's more densely developed neighborhoods, had a different perspective on do-it-yourself projects.

"Have you ever seen someone running three jackhammers all day on Thanksgiving? It's not a pretty sight," he said.

The split on the Woodside council, which voted 5-2 in favor of the looser restrictions on construction hours, reflects the dichotomy of opinions on noise laws -- no one wants to be subjected to their neighbors' incessant racket, but no one wants to be told they can't come home from work and spend a few hours refinishing a deck or nailing together a gazebo.

Woodsiders's reactions to the noise ordinance so far have been mixed, said Town Manager Susan George. About a dozen have commented, with some saying it's great, others wanting to know why contractors could work on Saturdays and a few expressing opposition to allowing residents to do construction on Sundays and holidays, she said.
What works

Passing the law is only the tip of the iceberg. Woodside staff, mindful of the turmoil in other communities when noise ordinances were passed, drafted an ordinance similar to Portola Valley's 1997 law. Portola Valley's ordinance, based largely on restricting construction activities to certain hours, is seen as a success. There haven't been a lot of complaints, sheriff's deputies don't seem to be having a hard time enforcing it, and there's been no uprising of enraged residents voting to overturn it, as Menlo Park faced when the City Council tried restrict noisy gas-powered leaf blowers.

"It really gets the job done for us," said Angela Howard, Portola Valley's town administrator.

Not only haven't there been angry people packing the council chambers to protest the law, but the town doesn't get too many complaints about people breaking it, either. The occasional violations, mostly for construction, are usually settled by phone call to the contractor, she said.

"We make it part of the pre-construction meeting to notify the contractor that we have this (ordinance) in place and we're not very tolerant about it not being enforced," Ms. Howard said.
Dropping decibels

One thing that distinguishes Portola Valley's law from those of Menlo Park and Atherton is that it sidesteps the issue of decibels altogether. Rather than setting decibel limits on the amount of noise that can emanate from a property, it sets a time limit on noisy activities, something easy for people to understand and easy for the authorities to enforce.

And enforcement is key. Create a law so complicated that it requires a weekend seminar to comprehend, and not only is it bound to get broken, it's going to put the police in a very awkward position.

"I think sometimes decibels are up to interpretation. It can depend on where you measure from," said Atherton police Chief Bob Brennan.

For police officers, the less subjective restrictions on hours are simpler to enforce, he said.

"It's easier to have something that's pretty well black-and-white," Chief Brennan says. "(Officers) aren't experts on noise meters. They have very little training on them, and there are very few times they have to pull them out."

Police Cmdr. Rothaus of Menlo Park, where noise complaints are a daily occurrence, said officers usually give warnings and hand out flyers explaining the city's regulations. Most people are unaware that they are breaking the law, he said.

Other types of noise complaints, like the continuous clamor of an air-conditioning unit for example, require the noise meters to be brought out, he said.

"We've never taken enforcement as the first approach," he said. "We ask them to stop the construction, or quiet their dog, and 99 percent of the time people cooperate. It's rare to have to get into a debate with somebody."

Repeat offenders do face fines -- $50 the first time, $250 for a second offense and $500 for the third, said Cmdr. Rothaus.

"The people who complain don't necessarily want someone to be cited. They just want the noise to stop," he said.

Atherton police officers found after an initial learning period, violations tapered off, especially now that signs are posted at construction sites with the hours clearly listed, said Chief Brennan.

"I think it's really under control here. The last year's been pretty good," he said.

When there are repeat violations, police go after the person responsible -- the contractor, not "the $8-an-hour people" who are unwittingly breaking the law by doing what they're told, he said.

Noise can become a really big issue, especially in communities that don't have other worries.

"There's not a lot of crime here, so these issues become the felonies," Chief Brennan said. "People become as emotional about noise issues as they do about homicides and robberies."
Facts about noise

According to the World Health Organization, noise is an increasing public health problem. Besides causing hearing loss, excessive exposure to noise can cause sleep disturbances, cardiovascular problems, reduce performance levels and "adverse social behavior."

Noise is often expressed in terms of decibel levels. The following comparison gives a few examples of just how loud common noises are in decibels:

60-70 dB ... normal conversation

90 dB ... train whistle at 500 feet

110 dB ... power saw

140 dB ... jet engine at 100 feet

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