Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly reversed a rule about gravel pit noise last week after hearing from its attorney that the rule was unconstitutional.

The rule, part of a special zoning package that applies only to gravel miners and other excavation businesses, required a person subdividing land next to a mine to build berms or noise-screening devices to limit noise from the gravel pit operation.

But after the borough law office reviewed the measure, which first passed in 2005, Mat-Su Planning Director Mark Mayo said the requirement was found to be "likely unconstitutional and should be deleted."

Alaska Aggregate Products Association executive director Tom Healy told the Assembly an attorney his trade organization consulted didn't believe the borough rule was unconstitutional or that it should be overturned. Doing so would harm gravel pit operators in the long run by requiring the operators to build such noise berms, he and others representing the gravel industry said.

"If you repeal this, any subdivider or developer can come in and say you need to build us a sound barrier and it's going to cost these businesses money after the fact," Reed Dilley, a Palmer gravel pit operator, told the Assembly.

Kevin Sorensen, a developer, said the rule was both unconstitutional and unfair to developers. Sorenson said property owners who generate noise are typically the ones who bear the burden of not disturbing their neighbors, not the other way around. He argued that gravel pit operators are "already obligated to do noise mitigation" by other borough rules.

The borough gravel-zoning district, called the interim materials district, limits how loud noise can be at neighboring property lines to 60 decibels in the daytime and 50 decibels at night. That's about how loud a normal office would be and the noise level of a quiet suburb, respectively.

Assemblyman Robert Wells said gravel pit operators shouldn't be punished if their operation predates a new housing subdivision next door. He cited a 2001 Right to Farm disclosure law that passed in the Alaska Legislature and in several other states that made property owners moving in near farms aware that they might face disruptive smells and sounds.

"When subdivisions get established right next to a farming operation, it says: 'Hey, you knew you were moving right next to a farm, and the compost stinks sometimes ... ," he said.

Civil engineer Mark Cottini suggested the Assembly implement a compromise so property owners shared the cost of building a buffer to block noise. But Spiropoulos said a compromise would still be asking one property owner to foot the bill for another's annoyance.

Assembly members debated the issue but ultimately voted to repeal it. Assembly members Wells and Mark Ewing, who favored Cottini's compromise, voted against the repeal.

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at www.adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.

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