Making A Little Noise About The Big Noise

I lived across the street from a mid-sized manufacturing plant. This worked out well because everyone was gone by 3:00 pm and there was no traffic.  

There was a very large concrete water tank literally across the street from my house. It probably was the size of my house. Not a problem. It had landscaping around it.

Then, they decided to demolish it over Memorial Day weekend, presumably because their employees would be gone. My friend worked for the company and told me they had gotten a reasonable bid from a professional demolition company but decided to rent equipment and have their maintenance workers do the work.

We spent the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend listening to some kind of pile driver booming every fifteen seconds or so. All freaking day. I lived 100 feet from this. Literally across the street. It stopped late in the day.

By Sunday, I had had enough. This was before the Internet, so I just called the company’s main number, and if nobody answered, I’d call the next number in the sequence. I don’t know what I was hoping to accomplish, but I was a mom on a mission. It was a freakin’ holiday. My next-door neighbor had a rare day off from her hospital residency.

Finally, someone answered, and he was from (you got it) the maintenance department. He told me to call So and So on Tuesday and get this taken care of.

Challenge accepted!

I didn’t wait to call on Tuesday. I called the police department and asked about the noise ordinance. They said it was legal for the company to make noise, but like I said, I was a mom on a mission. So, I asked the question of a lifetime.

“How many decibels?”

They agreed to come out, and a half-hour later, an officer showed up in a fancy black van, presumably filled with electronics. He asked me what my zoning was, and heck, I didn’t know. He said he would have to assume it was residential. (It was,) So, he stood on my lawn and held up whatever device he had, and then he went over to talk to the workers.

Work immediately ceased, and we got our peace and quiet back. My friend who worked there said the company had to pay a big fine.

Later in the summer, a demolition company came and finished in no time with very little noise.

And we all lived happily ever after.

I suppose.