Photo credit: Brett Sayles from Pexels
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This editorial from the Toronto Sun makes the point that well-written noise control laws are worthless unless they are enforced.
We agree.
For a variety of reasons, noise control laws are rarely enforced. The noise is often intermittent, and has already stopped by the time enforcement officers arrive. Police officers don’t like to enforce noise control laws. Depending on how the law is written, enforcement may require sound level meters which they claim they don’t know how to use, or which may not be calibrated to standards that will hold up in court. Low staffing levels for other enforcement officers, e.g., from a Department of Building and Safety, mean that someone may investigate a complaint days or weeks after it is filed, by which time the noise has long since dissipated.
For me the answer is simple: follow the example of Santa Monica, California, which uses crowd-sourced citizen reporting of leaf blower violations.
We suggest the folks in Toronto implement a system like the one in Santa Monica. It works.
