Dogs Don’t Pay Taxes: Noise Polution In Parkesburg

 

It was a recent Saturday morning and I was meeting a dear old friend at Seawell’s Café & Market on 1st Avenue (and incidentally, if you haven’t tried Seawell’s fresh-baked muffins, trust me that they are to die for).   My friend, like me born and raised in southeastern Delaware County, finally left there and moved here to Parkesburg this past spring.

I was eager to hear how she was settling-in and what she thought of our little piece of paradise now that she has been here long enough to develop a genuine sense of the place.  And before going further I should note that my friend is and has always been, shall we say, feisty: sharp-witted and sharp-tongued.

“On the whole I love it,” she said, “I just wish I had taken your advice and moved here sooner.”  Of course it did my heart good to hear that another person has fallen for this place we call home.

I asked what three things she liked best.  Without hesitating she replied: “The quiet, the quiet, and the quiet…so different from what I left behind.”  I offered a smile and a little laugh of understanding.

I then asked what if anything she didn’t like, and again without hesitation she answered: “The noise, the noise, and the noise.”

Clearly the two statements were at odds and so I asked her to explain.  She said that by and large Parkesburg was a delightfully, enchantingly quiet place, and that even after six months she was still reveling in the quiet on a daily basis, and thanking her lucky stars for finally delivering her to such a still relatively pastoral place. 

But, she noted, the pervasive peace and quiet was too often punctuated with disturbances to the generalized calm, underscoring the discordant noises that do occur.  I asked for some specifics.

“Motorcycles than can be heard a half-mile away; young people driving around in 10-year old Honda Civics whose mufflers have been changed to make them heard blocks away; and above all barking dogs whose owners apparently think such barking is not a nuisance to neighbors.”

Anything else, I asked.

“Look, “she said, “I don’t like loud noises, especially irritating noises, and I don’t know any responsible adult who does.”  She went on:  “There is a legal concept dating all the way back to English Common Law which holds that a person is entitled to ‘the quiet and peaceful enjoyment of his own home;’ meaning, obviously, that others do not have the right to inflict unwanted and unwarranted noise on me, you, or anybody else. 

So whether it’s a Harley bike or a little Honda car that has been tinkered with to make it obnoxiously loud, or an untrained dog allowed to bark and bay in the night and perhaps set off a whole chorus of dogs barking in response, I object, I strenuously object, you bet I do.

“But since you ask, yes, there are plenty of other noises, offenses against peace and quiet, which bother me.  Take gas-powered leaf blowers, for example; the sound of them is enough to wake the dead!  There are a number of communities in the country – notably Malibu, California – which have banned the use of them.  If it were up to me there would be more such citizen actions against irritating noise, noise pollution.

But I don’t let myself get too worked-up over labor-saving lawn equipment; I figure that’s part of the price we pay for living in the modern age when there is a machine for every task.  But there is absolutely no need for loud and obnoxious motorcycles and cars, which after all did not come from the factory that way, and there certainly is no reason why residents of a community who pay a ton of money in taxes should be bothered by nuisance dogs who don’t pay taxes and who otherwise contribute nothing to the community but poop.”

I had to admit that my friend had a point.  And I had to ask myself why so many of us are reluctant to speak up and object when needless, even senseless noise intrudes on and violates our right to ‘the simple and quiet enjoyment of our own homes.’ 

Surely part of the answer lies in the old admonition to ‘live and let live.’  Surely part of it is not wanting to cause trouble for a neighbor, or in the neighborhood.  So we suppress our irritation and aggravation, we try to remain philosophical; we hope that government-licensed inspection stations will start cracking down on obnoxiously loud motorcycles and cars, and we pray that the barking dog next door either will die or that its owners will get religion and wake up to the reality that their dogs’ barking is a bite to the sensibilities of their neighbors.

The conversation continued and I eventually asked my friend what it was that had caused her to become active, even militant, about what she kept referring to as ‘noise pollution.’ 

She explained how, about ten years ago, when she was still living in southeastern Delaware County and as the crow flies only about four miles away from Philadelphia International Airport, the airport had suddenly changed the takeoff and landing patterns for small, propeller-driven, so-called commuter planes. 

The new patterns brought those planes directly over her house, and the result was that each weekday morning from around 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., and each afternoon from around 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. – those times when business travelers were going and coming -- there was an almost constant parade of those noisy little planes flying a thousand feet or less right over her home. 

At first she tried to ignore it, but couldn’t.  Then she tried padding the windows with blankets and other insulating materials which hopefully would help absorb the sound and cushion the vibration. 

Alas, that didn’t work.  Then she just got mad.  She reasoned that a dozen or so business people en route to a sales meeting in Buffalo or Schenectady had no right to make her early mornings and late afternoons miserable. 

And so she started, as she described, to wage a one-woman war against this outrage, this affront, this violation of her long-enshrined legal right to ‘the quiet and peaceful enjoyment of her own home,’ a right, she reminded me, that goes back more than 500 years.

She quickly discovered that the airport had a person specifically charged with dealing with complaints from nearby residents about airplane noise.  She quickly became on a first-name basis with him. 

She peppered him with phone calls of complaint and hammered him with questions.  Then she kicked it up a notch to the head honcho of the airport; she made his life miserable too.

Then she started pestering the mayor of Philadelphia; her local, state, and federal representatives; and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration. 

She wrote letters to the editors of newspapers, magazines, internet websites and blogs.

She did everything she could think of to call attention to the problem that the convenience of a few people in the air was causing great misery to many thousands on the ground.  Always her point of view was: where is the fairness in that? 

Why should hard-working people be roused from their sleep before they need to get up, and why should little babies be set to crying, just so that the commuter airlines can make a buck and so that some junior sales person can get to Schenectady to pitch the proposition that company X, Y, or Z really needs to double-down on their order for Post-It Notes? 

My friend went on to explain that after a long, drawn-out, four-year battle with all the powers that be, one day the commuter planes suddenly stopped flying directly over her house.  And they never came back. 

She didn’t kid herself.  She knew the planes were still flying.  She understood that the takeoff and landing patterns had simply been shifted a bit, over some other neighborhood a few miles away. 

Her problem had now become the problem of other people.  Glad for relief from her rattling windows and disturbed sleep, she was nevertheless troubled by the fact that the problem had not been solved, only shifted onto others. 

As she told me: “I guess they finally just grew tired of dealing with me, concluded that I was a SOB who wasn’t going away, figured that it would be easier to move the flight patterns a few miles and hopefully shut me up, remove the thorn from their side.”

In her long discussion of how noise pollution is negatively impacting our quality of our life my friend noted that she would not have had the intellectual arguments to wage her war against the Philadelphia International Airport if she had not stumbled across a website called the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse. 

As the name suggests, the website is all about combating the noise which, day by day, robs us of a big part of the quality of life that all of us, rich or poor, seeks; which is to say ‘the simple and quiet enjoyment of our own homes.’

I highly recommend that everyone reading this check out the website of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse.  I would include a link to the website, but links don’t always work.  Better that you just ‘Google’ the term ‘Noise Pollution Clearinghouse,’ and a direct link to the site will be at the top of your results.

Of course I wouldn’t refer you to a website if I hadn’t already checked it out myself.  I did, and I must say I was impressed.  The website has been up and running for more than a decade, and from my investigation of the site it seems to me that from the beginning the people behind it have taken a prudent, judicious, yet nonetheless very active stance against needless noise in all its manifestations. 

Their position seems to be the same as that held by English Common Law many hundreds of years ago: that no one has the right to infringe on your own ‘quiet and peaceful enjoyment of your own home.’  Consider this short passage from the homepage of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse:

About Noise, Noise Pollution, and the Clearinghouse

The word "noise" is derived from the Latin word "nausea," meaning seasickness. Noise is among the most pervasive pollutants today. Noise from road traffic, jet planes, jet skis, garbage trucks, construction equipment, manufacturing processes, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and boom boxes, to name a few, are among the audible litter that are routinely broadcast into the air.

Noise negatively affects human health and well-being. Problems related to noise include hearing loss, stress, high blood pressure, sleep loss, distraction and lost productivity, and a general reduction in the quality of life and opportunities for tranquility.

We experience noise in a number of ways. On some occasions, we can be both the cause and the victim of noise, such as when we are operating noisy appliances or equipment. There are also instances when we experience noise generated by others just as people experience second-hand smoke. While in both instances, noises are equally damaging, second-hand noise is more troubling because it has negative impacts on us but is put into the environment by others, without our consent.

The air into which second-hand noise is emitted and on which it travels is a "commons," a public good. It belongs to no one person or group, but to everyone. People, businesses, and organizations, therefore, do not have unlimited rights to broadcast noise as they please, as if the effects of noise were limited only to their private property. On the contrary, they have an obligation to use the commons in ways that are compatible with or do not detract from other uses.

People, businesses, and organizations that disregard the obligation to not interfere with others' use and enjoyment of the commons by producing noise pollution are, in many ways, acting like a bully in a school yard. Although perhaps unknowingly, they nevertheless disregard the rights of others and claim for themselves rights that are not theirs.

We have organized to raise awareness of noise pollution and help communities take back the commons from those acting like bullies. Our efforts include building a library of resources and tools concerning noise pollution, establishing links to other groups that have similar collections, establishing networks among local noise activists, assisting communities and activists who are working to reduce noise pollution, and monitoring and advocating for stronger noise controls.

As I left my friend after our Saturday morning muffins and coffee at Seawell’s, we both agreed that Parkesburg is an enclave in an increasingly noisy world.  We both likewise agreed that if we are to protect that which we so much love, the quiet which makes this place the home we sought, we need to be proactive about protecting it.

A final thought: neither my friend nor I, nor any reasonable person, has any objections to the sweet sounds of little children playing in the backyard or out on the street, nor even to the sound of teenage boys skate-boarding or playing basketball out on the street with one of those store-bought basket devices. 

Those sounds are the normal, sweet sounds of children growing up in a neighborhood, as much a part of Americana as mom, the flag, and apple pie. 

No one objects to the normal sounds of childhood, or to the normal sounds of folks occasionally enjoying themselves by entertaining others out on the patio or deck. 

No, according to my friend, who I came to regard as something of a guru, the true offenses to peace and quiet here in Parkesburg are few but clear: Harley Davidson motorcycles whose exhaust systems have been tinkered with to purposely make them loud and obnoxious; ten year old little import cars whose exhaust systems have similarly been modified to make the loud and obnoxious; and barking dogs whose behavior has never been modified by their owners.

And let’s not forget freight trains coupling cars in the middle of the night, helicopters being out through their test flights over our town, or corporate jets taking off from Chester County Airport in Sadsbury flying the affluent to a big meeting or their favorite coastal hideaway.

The question is, to what extent and for how much longer will we suffer these noises gladly? 

When will we apply the brakes and say, no, you cannot do that?  Or will we slowly allow the noise-barbarians to take over, such that ‘the simple and quiet enjoyment of one’s own home’ becomes an oxymoron? 

As many bone-shattering issues as we have to address as a nation, the fact remains that we still have to look out for, and protect, the quiet charm that is Parkesburg, Pennsylvania.

Much is made these days about becoming ‘green,’ recycling and all that, and there is nothing wrong with any of that. 

But I submit that one of the greatest things any of us can do for the environment, the ‘common’ place we all inhabit, is to limit the noise we project, to think about how the noise we create might effect – impinge, interrupt, and otherwise mess with the right of others to ‘the simple and quiet enjoyment of their own homes – and thereby, for example, to opt for a simple broom rather than a leaf blower.