Excess noise would cost $100 under King County proposal
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When the golf course at the bottom of a hill in rural Renton started playing loud music at night, Dennis Peshek went to the city of Renton to complain.
Sorry, he was told, the golf course was in Renton, but he lived in unincorporated King County.
After 10 frustrating trips to city hall and five to Renton City Council meetings, Peshek was ready to hire a lawyer, until he negotiated with the clubhouse manager to douse the late-night noise.
"I couldn't sleep. I couldn't watch TV," said Peshek, who's lived in the Maplewood Golf Course neighborhood for 30 years. "My back yard's been invaded."
Few realities of rural and urban living alike provoke as much discord as too much noise: Construction workers next door. Garbage trucks in the wee hours of the morning. Low-flying jets. Neighbor kids rehearsing with their new rock band. That new puppy next door that won't stop howling.
Blistered by complaints about noise, a committee of the Metropolitan King County Council on Thursday is scheduled to vote on changing noise laws for unincorporated King County, making violations civil rather than criminal.
Instead of going to the time and trouble of prosecuting an offender in court, the Sheriff's Department could simply slap him on the spot with a $100 ticket.
The proposal would allow deputies to issue fines to anyone making so much racket that a deputy standing 75 feet away could not conduct a normal conversation.
As it is now, "we have no way of tracking this," said Curt Horner, a noise expert with the Seattle King County Health Department. "This will give a paper trail."
The city of Seattle passed a similar measure in 1999, part of a larger noise ordinance that was vetoed by Mayor Paul Schell as being too broad. Today, excessive noise in Seattle remains a criminal matter, with the sheer volume of complaints to police - more than 12,000 a year - making it nearly impossible to prosecute. In the past two years, Seattle's city attorneys filed 15 noise-disturbance cases; all but two were dismissed.
Complaints are steadily growing as Seattle's neighborhoods become more crowded and residential homes blend into what have traditionally been commercial and industrial areas.
"I've lived here my whole life and I've never seen it like this," said David George, a noise expert with the city Department of Design, Construction and Land Use, who monitors construction-related noise complaints. "It doesn't matter what season, it's continual. You have the stadiums, the convention center, big downtown projects that last a long time. Soon as one project ends, another starts up."
George says he gets eight to 12 noise complaints each week from people complaining about loud construction noise - mostly complaints that work is starting too early. By law, that work is allowed in residential neighborhoods from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekends.
Those who violate noise laws - if the city goes to the trouble of prosecuting them - could face a six-month jail term, though George said the city's most effective tool is its ability to "red tag" a project and halt work.
The city red-tagged just one project last year, he said - a commercial job near Yesler Terrace. George said he stood one night on a hill overlooking the project with binoculars and called the project manager on his cell phone. The manager lied and told George his employees weren't working and the city stopped the project.
Heather Kern, a private investigator who lives in the Eastlake neighborhood, said she made several calls to George when Onvia.com was building its office near the Interstate-5 Mercer Street exit across from her apartment.
"We had a whole building of people being rattled awake by generators and cranes," she said. "We're growing up so fast. What's the poor tenant to do? You'd wake up to them, you'd come home to them."
In incorporated parts of the county, noise laws are enforced by local police jurisdictions and the Health Department - although health officials have not had the money to aggressively pursue offenders.
"We don't have the staffing to go out and check noise levels," said Horner, the noise expert, "so very little is done in the county. If it's something really horrendous, we will take measurements."
As in Seattle, construction in the county is restricted to between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekends.
"It's extremely tough," said Chip Murphy, project manager for the Hedreen company, which is involved in the expansion of Seattle's convention center. "There's a lot of hoops we have to go through. ... but construction is going to happen. It's going to get done."
Susan Gilmore can be reached at 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com.