Letter: Asheville deserves noise ordinance based on science

Graphic by Lori Deaton

On June 1, the Asheville Public Safety Committee passed a motion to send the city’s proposed noise ordinance to City Council with a recommendation to allow noise as high as 70-75 decibels at sites of complaint, including residences, in the Central Business District.

The Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods is strongly opposed and urges the Council to reject this recommendation that contradicts the city’s top two guiding principles for a noise ordinance: (1) “excessive noise is a public health, welfare and safety hazard” and (2) “the community has a right to an environment free from excessive noise that may degrade their quality of life or diminish property values.”

For years and in meeting comments, residents of the CBD, Kenilworth and other neighborhoods have expressed their suffering from excessive commercial and industrial noise, something the committee did not discuss. Without evidence, the committee decided high decibel limits would stimulate economic recovery for the music industry.

Imagine living with continuous noise from an operating vacuum cleaner surrounding your residence, equal to 75 decibels. Like the Richter scale for earthquakes, decibels are logarithmic. An increase in 10 dB represents a tenfold intensity, a doubling of noise. A small increase can mean a significant increase in potential damage to hearing.

For decades, the American Public Health Association and the World Health Organization have studied noise pollution’s effects on health. Because continued exposure to excessive noise is highly stressful, damages children’s development and leads to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other serious illnesses, WHO recommends a nighttime limit of 45 dB in residential zones.

CAN urges the City Council to act with compassion and respect for all by adopting guidelines of leading public health organizations. By prioritizing noise mitigation, Asheville can support music without causing harm to residents. Asheville deserves a noise ordinance based on proven science that will create a safer, healthier, more sustainable, more socially just and more livable Asheville for everyone.

— Rick Freeman
President, Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods
Asheville

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5 thoughts on “Letter: Asheville deserves noise ordinance based on science

  1. iah

    Ashevillians can start a new group: International Association of Homebodies or IAH. The group could promote never moving anywhere nor traveling as being morally superior and refer to themselves as “The Static Quo”. They could make public speeches online using a kind of faux british english and deplore how everything good is in the static past of nonmovement, where everyone lived stoned in amber, unable to move even a finger lest they delve into the immoral world of physical movement in space and time.

  2. WK

    Good luck getting any compassion from those conniving chicks.
    They don’t care about our health and public safety. They keep showing that over and over again…

  3. Mike Rains

    Rick,
    The proposed noise ordinance looks very well thought out and appears to be a good attempt to balance neighborhood impacts form central biz noise/music. I don’t agree with the all night allowance in the CBD, even of somewhat reduced noise. After 12 or 1 am, that should not be allowed.

    Are you aware of the following item added under the noise limit table? It appears to address adjoining neighborhoods to the CBD. Of course the “X” reduction has yet to be determined and as always, the devil is in the details. FYI, Charlotte recently moved their decibel limit up to 85 dB for similar CBD noise/music, but I believe their hours are somewhat more restrictive at night.

    (4) **The sound level limits shall be reduced by an additional X decibels when measured at the
    property line of an abutting residential district (alternatively the reduction could be measured
    beyond the property line of the sound source in a residential district). Staff commentary: staff is
    recommending the addition of this standard to provide protection to residentially zoned
    properties located in close proximity to commercial sound producers. Specific standards will be
    field tested and incorporated into this draft ordinance prior to consideration by City Council.

    Finally, the fines for violation need serious reconsideration upward. $100 for first, $200 for second violation and has to be same entity, etc. In today’s $$’s, $100 is a small price to pay for a loud music session. Of course, all the city’s fines are too low based on what inflation has done to the dollar. But I would be pushing for much higher limits on this; particularly for the second and subsequent violations.

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