After almost ten years of living in New York City, Kritsada Hancheewasin, 29, thought he finally hit the jackpot: a rent stabilized apartment in the West Village. It was, in his mind, at the center of everything. But he quickly learned what that meant: round the clock car honking, loud garbage trucks, drunken serenades and early morning construction.
"I have a hard time sleeping at night," he said.
Most New Yorkers seem to think that the city is too loud. The non-emergency number, 311, receives roughly 1,000 calls about noise each day. Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said that noise is the number one quality-of-life complaint in New York City.
To combat the noise problem, the Bloomberg administration has announced a plan to overhaul the noise code for the first time in more than 30 years. Unlike the vague language of noise codes in the past, the new ordinance's targets are more specific, including construction noise and nightclub music, but also Mr. Softee ice cream truck jingles and even barking dogs.
"Most complaints about noise are not frivolous," said Bloomberg. "Our goal is to turn down the volume of noise complaints, while at the same time allowing construction, entertainment, and other business activities to go on in ways that are not as disruptive to New Yorkers."
While everybody seems to have a horror story about noise, many New Yorkers remain skeptical of the mayor's proposal, doubtful whether the law can be enforced effectively. Some say that the citywide plan will not help much to solve problems so neighborhood-specific as noise. Councilmember Gale Brewer says local officials and community board members should be allowed to do more to help curb noise level. (See "Using 311 To Combat Neighborhood Noise" by Gale Brewer.) Others, such as Fred Goodman writing in New York Magazine, wonder why the proposed code says so little about the "big boys" of noise, "especially the airplanes and trains that plague the outer boroughs. Just ask somebody who's suffering through a ball game at Shea while La Guardia's flights roar overhead if he's concerned about how loud Mister Softee is, and you'll see why Bloomberg is often seen as out of touch."
If you have to raise your voice while speaking to someone three feet away from you, then your immediate environment could be hazardous to your health, according to the Council on the Environment of New York City.
A normal conversation usually registers at about 60 decibels, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (Every ten decibels higher, the noise seems twice as loud). Exposure to noise at 85 decibels -- roughly the sound of a noisy restaurant -- for more than eight hours could damage a person's hearing. Noise levels above 140 decibels – the sound of an airplane taking off -- can cause damage to hearing after just one exposure. A sound of a dog barking, depending on your location, could be as loud as 100 decibels.
One of the controversial measures of Bloomberg's new plan is that dog owners will be fined as much as $175 if their dogs bark for more than five minutes at night and 10 minutes during the day. Penalties for noise violations range from $45 to $25,000.
"This is out of control," Miriam Prussman, a dog owner, told the New York Post. "What is he going to do? Restrict dogs from having vocal cords?"
Other dog owners disagree. "If you can't stop your dog from barking in five minutes, then you probably deserve to be fined, "said Hancheewasin, who owns a Shih Tzu.
New Yorkers also puzzled over the regulation that would require the Mister Softee ice cream truck to replace its repeating jingle with manually operated bells by 2006.
"As for ice cream trucks, who doesn't love them?" said Bloomberg, but last month alone, he added, the city received 243 complaints about them.
"While Mister Softie is not terrible,hearing the song over and over again at 9:30 p.m. is a problem," agreed Chris Boyd from Queens,one of dozens of New Yorkers from throughout the city writing in response to our question "What is the greatest source of noise in your neighborhood?" on the Community Gazettes. [Scroll down to the bottom of the page for all the answers]
Hilliary Guishard, manager of the Mister Softee depot in Carroll Gardens worried about her job prospect. "If there is no jingle, there is no business," she said. "I would invite the mayor to ride in a truck for a day. We can use a bell, we can use the jingle, and he can see the difference." (See "Mister Softee and the Sound of Gentrification in Carroll Gardens" by Nuriel Adler)
Before the most recent proposed regulations, Mayor Bloomberg had announced a more modest effort in October, 2002 that he called Operation Silent Night, an initiative to curb noise level in 24 targeted neighborhoods. Since then, the operation has yielded almost 40,000 summonses. But noise complaints were still on the rise in many of the designated areas, such as Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. (See The Roar of the Crowd in Soundview by Khadijah Rentas). The new plan will cover every neighborhood in the city.
"We knew all along that Silent Night was only a band-aid to a serious problem," Bloomberg said.
The new noise code, for example, has tougher and more specific regulations on noise from air conditioners and construction.
The current code has a standard for an air conditioning unit of 45 decibels. But it has been interpreted to apply to a single unit. This allows people to cluster multiple units generating noise far higher than 45 decibels without violating the law. The new regulations close this loophole.
"I vote number one [source of noise are] big construction projects," said Lucy Koteern of downtown Brooklyn. "Jack hammers, cement mixing trucks, rubbish dumpster, delivery trucks all make too much noise."
Kelly Grigsby from Hell's Kitchen agreed."[The construction] starts at 7 a.m.on weekday mornings and 9 am on Saturdays. It wakes me up before I need to get up."
The new plan requires construction projects to be curtailed on weekends and at nights. It also establishes "noise management plans" that include portable sound barriers and noise jackets for jackhammers at all construction sites.
But by far, the majority of noise complaint calls to 311 involve partying neighbors and blasting music from bars and clubs.
This type of complaint is far from new. In the 17th century wealthy Dutch New Yorkers complained of "sea-shanty singing drunks carousing along the docks," according to the Washington Post.
"The noise from patrons to and from neighborhood clubs is by far the largest sources of noise in my neighborhood," said Kathy K. "Clubs need to assume some responsibility for the impact that their patrons have when exiting… Although I am happy to see people share the joy of music and dance, it was not appreciated at 4:30 a.m."
Many residents also complained of smokers, who, thanks to Bloomberg's anti-smoking law, flocked outside the bars to have cigarettes and, in a process, took the party to the street.
"This is supposed to be the city that never sleeps," David Rabin told USA TODAY. "It's now the city that never sleeps because smokers are huddled beneath a four-story walk-up talking."
With the support from the New York Nightlife Association, the new law will allow club owners to fix the noise problem instead of paying a $3,000 fine for the first violation. "They can use the money they would have to pay in fines to instead fix their noise problem, which might mean installing more noise-proof insulation," Bloomberg said.
Vibration or "bass level," which cannot be captured by conventional decibel scale, will also be subject to the new law.
Some people have questioned how police officers are going to enforce this new law. What happens if the dog stops barking by the time the police gets to the scene? Do dog owners have to turn themselves in?
In the past police officers have had to use the hand-held decibel meter to issue summonses for noise violations. This is a problem because the meter itself often needs calibration and has a margin of error of plus or minus three decibels. Many officers don't often have meters readily available and don't even know how to use them.
Under this new law, cops only have to use their ears to issue summonses using the "plainly audible" standard or, in another words, common sense.
Some argue that noise, by nature, is subjective.
Police Officer Kenneth Zorn, director of Community Affairs for the 106th precinct, said his precinct receives up to 30 noise complaints a night from 6 p.m. Friday to 2 a.m. Monday. Most callers complained about parties that at times can go on for two to three days.
"What's loud to one person may not be loud to another," said Officer Zorn.
Even with these restrictions, some argued that Bloomberg's plan doesn't cover enough. Just weeks after the mayor's announcement, the city council criticized his plan for failing to offer new limitations on the source of car alarms.
"With this legislation in the press, I decided to count this last weekend how many times a car alarm went off around my house," said Boyd. "I stopped counting at 35 separate car alarms."
More importantly, critics argue, noise is very specific to individual neighborhoods, and the mayor's plan leaves out many communities.
"Stopping ice cream trucks from playing their jingles and barking dogs is not exactly the problem in the middle of Manhattan," said Martha Vladymir.
That is why City Councilmember Gale Brewer has drafted legislation that would require the city to provide information from 311 to local officials.
"The city's 311 system provides only city or borough-wide data, which hides evidence of where local noise problem originate," Brewer said. "The mayor can tell us that noise complaints in Manhattan have increased from 5,000 to 5,050 in one month, but he can't tell us if 50 of those calls are coming from the same raucous bar or even a specific block."
The Bloomberg administration does not support the bill, arguing that it would be too costly.
Fed up with sounds of airplane taking off and landing from JFK airport, residents in Howard Beach, Queens, formed Sane Aviation for Everyone to combat airport noise in 1994. Since then they have been measuring noise level at various locations and found readings louder than officials claim. The group is now asking for funding to correct the noise problem from a new airport lease agreement between the city and Port Authority. (See "Enduring Half a Century of Airport Noise in Howard Beach" by Grace Hernandez).
In the Bronx, members of community board 9 have compiled documentations to try to prove that a local bar in too loud and dangerous to the community.
LOUD CITY
A city-by-city comparison of decibel levels around the world, New York came at the top at 80 decibels. No wonder some New Yorkers have had it. "Enough already" Boyd said. "Pass the bill and let us have some rest."
But not every New Yorker seems so annoyed about noise.
"I think that if you're going to live in New York City, you should realize that it's not going to be like Kansas," said Mary Anne Syre who works in a restaurant in Greenwich Village. "It's going to be loud." Â
A city employee by day, Jim Scarcella begins his second life as a volunteer beach monitor the moment he reaches his Midland Beach home on Staten Island. At least once a week, you'll find him patrolling the local sand, picking up trash and filling out litter surveys for the Department of Environmental Protection.
"You name it, I've probably found it on the beach," says Scarcella with a laugh.
Scarcella, who also happens to serve as the head of the Natural Resource Preservation Association, a New York City group dedicated to improving the aquatic environment, knows that not everybody shares his zeal. Still, he is happy to report some notable signs of progress. Gone are some of the problems of the past , the algae blooms that shut down city beaches in 1976 and the medical waste scares that kept bathers away in 1987. Barring the occasional bacteria advisory from the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, things are good and getting better, at least from the perspective of a guy who first started volunteering in 1990.
"I think we're making strides," Scarcella says. "I'm fortunate in that I like doing this, though. I went to the beach today with my son and his friend and picked up another 30 pounds of litter."
In a city with few environmental success stories, the improving state of local beaches is worth celebrating, if not too loudly. Sure, the city, state and federal agencies that oversee water safety have had their occasional differences. In a recent issue New York magazine article, for example, representatives from the mayor's office grumbled about the new EPA bacteria standards -- standards which went into effect this April and which force the city to test for enterococci, a class of pathogens that thrives in untreated animal feces. Still,when you compare water and beach monitoring with other hot-button issues such as national air pollution standards and World Trade Center toxic sampling, the level of inter-agency cooperation is striking.
"It's a priority," says Helen Grebe, head of the Environmental Protection Agency's regional coastal monitoring program, one of at least five local agencies looking to reduce beach pollution. "People want to preserve the region's reputation as a place that still remains in close contact with the water. That's hard to do when you're closing beaches."
For Grebe, keeping the region's reputation in tact means sending out regular helicopter sorties up and down the coast. Each morning, her New Jersey-based monitoring team performs an aerial survey from Cape May to the east end of Long Island, for "floatables" -- waterborne litter -- and oil slicks. If her team finds anything, they quickly report the sighting and location to aquatic cleanup crews.
In New York State, reports of oil are given to the U.S. Coast Guard and floatable pollution to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Within New York City waterways, the city's own Department of Environmental Protection, operating under its dual authority as guardian of the city's incoming water and chief guarantor of outgoing wastewater quality, has its own fleet of "trash skimmer" boats. Circling the harbor, Jamaica Bay and other, smaller waterways, these funnel-shaped craft vacuum up trash before it gets a chance to reach the beach.
The three-level defense, while effective, is still far from perfect. Like most American cities, New York employs a combined sewer and wastewater treatment system. That means the rainwater hitting streets and the sewage exiting bathrooms both head for the same place: underground catchment basins that serve as a channel to the city's 14 water pollution control plants. According to the Department of Environmental Protection, however, the city's water treatment system is currently equipped to treat only 40 percent of city rainwater. To keep the remaining 60 percent from overloading the system, the city employs combined sewage overflows, essentialy giant underground bathtubs that dump their excess contents directly into local waterways in the event of a major storm or flood. Because floatable pollutants rise to the top and exit the quickest, the clearest indication that local sewers have hit their maximum capacity is the number of plastic items bobbing on the surface of local waterways in the wake of summer storms.
To curb this problem, the Department of Environmental Protection has installed numerous hoods and nets to keep floatables trapped. It has also relied heavily on the six-year-old beach monitor program.
As a member of that program, Scarcella lays out the duties: Volunteers must visit their assigned beach once a week within two hours of high tide. Equipped with stakes and rope, they map out a 200 foot stretch of beach parallel to the shore and count the number of items deposited just below the high water mark. Using a survey sheet provided by the department, volunteers keep track of how many plastic, paper and styrofoam floatables fall within their survey zone. They also take note of living and dead animals in the vicinity and fax the survey results to Robert Gans, program manager for the Department of Environmental Protection's Volunteer Beach Floatable Survey .
"Last year we did a comparsion of 24 beaches," says Gans. "We saw significant increases in waterfowl and fish, which we're taking as a sign of increased water quality and clarity. And we saw significant decreases in plastics and very little medical waste noted."
Gans says he hopes to up the number of monitored beaches to 30 this summer. He also expects to see the number of reported floatables decrease. The spring relaunch of citywide plastic recycling should reduce the number of plastic bottles and bottle caps finding their way into city sewers, he says.
More importantly, the Department of Environmental Protection's own ongoing efforts to upgrade city pollution facilities are starting to pay off in increased water clarity, which is in turn drawing more visitors to the beach. Like many in the beach clean-up game, Gans sees anything that gets New Yorkers to view the local coastline as a recreational destination as opposed to a neglected dumping ground as a "win/win."
Not all volunteers share the same level of optimism, however. Ida Sanoff, a beach monitor in Brighton Beach, says the water at her favorite beach is the cleanest she's ever seen it. Still, it's the growing number of cigarette butts above the tideline that has her concerned.
"People don't realize that clean streets equal clean beaches," she says. "Now with everybody standing outside restaurants and smoking, I can see that that's going to get worse."
Whether or not last year's smoking ban has led directly to more cigarette butts on the beach, one thing is for sure: Cigarette butts are the predominant, individual component of floatable litter. Last September, the American Littoral Society sponsored its annual beach cleanup. After pulling in 334,000 pounds of trash (of which New York City accounted for 152,000) and 220,000 items, volunteers sampled the resulting contents. Their findings: Cigarette litter accounted for 18 percent of all items collected.
Such data highlight the limits of litter policing. To stem the problem at the source, the Department of Environmental Protection has taken to sponsoring a "Clean Streets/Clean Beaches" program with the Metropolitan Transit Authority. The program runs ads on city trains reminding New Yorkers that sidewalk litter often goes directly into local waterways. Still, the message doesn't always go through.
"A volunter can count so many cigarette butts it's unbelievable," says Gans, acknowledging the problem. "If they're really diligent about it, they can get up to 150, 160 and still be counting."
Fortunately, many of the volunteers who help the city patrol its coastline are the same people helping to bolster its educational efforts. Joel Banslaben is chairman of the Surfrider Foundation of New York City. He says his organization is planning to launch a storm drain stenciling program. Modeled on successful efforts in California and around Maryland's Chesapeake Bay, the program spray paints "drains to bay" advisories directly onto stormwater basins and city culverts, explicitly reminding passersby that whatever they drop in the gutter might be waiting for them the next time they visit Coney Island or Orchard Beach. Another Surfrider education program already experiencing success is the Respect the Beach program, which brings school-age children from Manhattan and Brooklyn out to the Rockaways to help with Clean-up, learn about stormwater runoff and finish the two day camp taking surf lessons.
"You need to establish programs that lead people to treat the water with the respect it deserves," Banslaben says. "People want to get reconnected with the waterfront."Â
Given the united political disdain Staten Islanders once reserved for the Fresh Kills Landfill , you would think there might be a similar, collective antipathy for litter, blight, and illegal dumping.
Not entirely. A trip down Victory Boulevard, Forest Avenue or any one of a dozen major thoroughfares reveals the sad truth: Staten Islanders can be just as messy, if not messier, than their crowded counterparts across the harbor.
"You see it every day," grumbles Councilmember James Oddo. "Whether it's somebody rolling down the window and throwing out the cigarette butt or dropping trash on the sidewalk, people do it without thinking."
Population growth has only added to the problem. According to the U.S. Census, Staten Island grew from 380,000 residents in 1990 to 445,000 in 2000, a 17 percent growth rate -- higher than any other borough in the city or any other county in the state.
Though bigger than most U.S. cities, the Staten Island response to pervasive trash remains quaintly small-town in nature. Each spring, the Staten Island Advance, the borough's lone daily newspaper, conducts a series of "trashbuster" volunteer pickup gatherings. Meanwhile, the Staten Island Source, a free weekly distributed to ferry riders, has opted for a more Puritan tactic: Shaming politicians and property owners. Since the beginning of the year, the weekly has been publishing photos and addresses of the island's dirtiest lots and sidewalks under a bold "Fix It!" headline.
"We've been getting about three or four [photo] submissions a week," says publisher Alan Bauer.
The outrage has reached the ears of local politicians such as Borough President James Molinaro. On April 21, Molinaro issued a "Dirty Dozen" list of targeted trouble spots around the island. Within days, the list had grown to 28 sites as residents phoned in their own candidates. Using both a newly purchased street sweeper and a crew of hired inmates from the local Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, the borough president's office reported full cleanup of the 28 sites on May 12.
When it comes to keeping this cleanup going through the summer, Molinaro says his office has no choice but to scale things back. "We don't have the money," Molinaro says, succinctly. "We can focus on the boardwalks and a few parks during the summer, but that's it."
One year-round remedy employed in other corners of the city, the business improvement district, has been slow to catch on in Staten Island. New York City currently boasts 46 such districts located in every borough but Staten Island.
One person hoping to change that is Susan Meeker, executive director of the West Brighton Local Development Corporation. Her group has submitted an application with the city Department of Planning and hopes to have the project up and running in the autumn.
"There's still time for us to get smacked on the nose," says Meeker. "But we're further along than any other group on Staten Island.
In selling local merchants and representatives on the business improvement district concept, Meeker has had to step gingerly around the dreaded "t" word: taxes. Although West Brighton falls within the generally liberal-voting 49th council district on Staten Island's north shore, its businesses tend to be less prosperous than those in the more conservative-voting, southern sections of the island. To pay for supplemental cleanup and beautification costs, business owners pay a percentage-based surcharge on their annual property tax assessment. To keep the district within the comfort zone of local merchants, Meeker is proposing a minimum assessment of $350 per year.
Similar attempts to form a business improvement district in St. George, the island's most heavily trafficked neighborhood, have foundered on the tax issue. "There's too many state and federal buildings," says Molinaro. "The Library, court system, D.A. building: none of those are on the tax roll, so we didn't have enough businesses to pay for it."
As for illegal dumping, a problem that tends to affect the borough's less-developed portions, Oddo, whose district includes much of the Greenbelt park system in the middle portion of the island, is seeking to patch up the borough's historically dysfunctional relationship with the Department of Sanitation.
Though opposed to anything that would reopen Fresh Kills Landfill, Oddo says he has lobbied Sanitation officials to reopen its drop-off facility for bulk waste. Currently, the department accepts drop offs only for hazardous items such as used car batteries at its Special Waste Disposal site on Staten Island's Muldoon Ave. Officially, city residents are entitled to six bulk items per curbside pickup. Judging by the number of rusted dishwashers and sinks located around the island's western side, not all residents are living within this allotment.
"I know the [household dump] facility costs money, but the amount of money they're saving is being eaten up by the amount of locations they now have to go out and clean," Oddo says.
Oddo has also invited Sanitation Department representatives to participate in the recently reconvened Midland Beach Task Force. First launched in the mid 1990s by former Councilmember John Fusco, the task force has performed three monthly tours through Midland Beach, a neighborhood beset by derelict lots and homes, since March.
During the latest sweep, representatives from the Department of Sanitation and Fire Department issued more than 30 citations for illegal dumping and improperly-stored hazardous materials. The next sweep is scheduled for mid-June.
Such efforts, while helpful, have only driven home the primary, underlying cause of Staten Island's mounting trash problem -- Staten Islanders. Like most virtues, litter cleanup begins at home, Oddo says. Until residents find a way to turn outrage into sustainable, behavior-changing action, sweeps, cleanup campaigns and other political remedies will provide little more than a short-term remedy for what is already shaping up to be a long-term problem.
"Staten Islanders love to point the finger at the city and other boroughs, saying 'We took your trash for 50 years. We're the forgotten borough,'" says Oddo. "But the litter problem we have was created and is created daily by Staten Islanders. This isn't people flying in from Pluto or driving in from Brooklyn and dumping on our streets. It's people from Staten Island. We need to look ourselves in the mirror and admit it: We're the ones doing this."