Your home is your castle. When you are in your own home, or on your property,
you are entitled to peace
and quiet. If you want to
sleep in until noon, it’s your
right. If you want to lay in
your hammock and sip
iced tea, that’s your right
too. And if you want to sit
in your recliner and watch
your favorite football team
or movie without
interruption, that’s your right as well. Because your home is your castle and no one has the right to violate it.
However, here in Putnam County, the right of citizens to have peace and quiet in their own homes is being violated by businesspeople who feel neighbors should have to put up with their noise in the name of "progress." Those business people are contractors who don’t understand that their right to earn a living ends at your property line.
In Teays Valley, in Crooked Creek, in Hurricane, and elsewhere, construction tractors are rattling windows and the nerves of law-abiding citizens. And the inconsiderate contractors are getting away with it.
Several months ago PutnamLIVE.com reported about Janice Scott who righteously complained of tractor noise from an adjacent development in her Country Villas neighborhood in Teays Valley. One neighbor sent us video of a tractor over his backyard fence that was making raucous noise at 8:30 at night. We went out the next morning and couldn't hold a conversation with John Brown in his backyard because of the noise which could be heard several blocks away.
No one should have to live like that.
When PutnamLIVE.com called the contractor, Dencil McGrew, his response was classic: "This is a 24-hour world," he says.
Not for tractor noise.
I called Sandy Mellert with the Putnam County Planning Commission. She points out that Putnam County doesn’t have an ordinance against construction noise.
It should.
When PutnamLIVE.com published a story about the noise the Country Villas neighbors credited the "Power of the Press" for making their neighborhood quieter again.
We should not have to report on such complaints. Contractors need to find a way to keep from disrupting neighborhoods for their projects. (Unless they are willing to split the profits with the neighbors!)
A few miles away, in Crooked Creek, Ellen Mills-Pauley was forced to surrender land that has been in her family for more than a century to build the new U.S. 35 extension. Never mind that she has a report showing the State of West Virginia determined that the route near her home was millions of dollars more expensive than a route leading to I-64 near Milton. In an abuse of the eminent domain process, Mills-Pauley was forced to sell her family's land. Now, adding insult-to-injury, she is enduring construction noise in her neighborhood.
This is wrong.
In my once-quiet neighborhood in Hurricane, it is our turn. The new Wal-Mart, which has no business being constructed near homes, is being shoved down our throats by greedy Hurricane and Putnam County politicians looking for more property and B & O taxes to waste. Like in Mills-Pauley’s neighborhood they are turning their backs on people who have paid taxes for decades to push their agenda.
And that agenda comes with noise. Lots of noise.
Common sense says the Wal-Mart should be built in a shopping center-not a neighborhood. But the City of Hurricane and Putnam County Development Authority are short on common sense and long on bad management and greed.
Recently tractors started moving dirt for the Hurricane Wal-Mart. The noise has been intolerable. On two occasions I was awakened with my windows shut. Forget about taking a quiet nap in my hammock in the front yard.
Contacting Hurricane City Hall and Police Department doesn’t do any good. (Though I'm not surprised. They never have properly enforced the town's nuisance law).
I was told I was "stupid" for expecting to be able to sleep in my home. City Manager Ben Newhouse repeatedly asked, "Why don’t you move?" but is unwilling to put his money where his mouth is and cut a check. Any city manager who demands that longtime residents move because of construction noise should be fired for callousness.
When I called Keith Ziglar, an executive with Cleveland Construction, which is doing the Wal-Mart work, he tried to put a positive spin on the situation. "It's a short project. It will only be going on until September."
"Until September."
Apparently Ziglar doesn't understand that "until September" is nearly a year-months too long to put up with the noise from Cleveland Construction's tractors. And that assumes the project will be finished on time. When have you heard of any large construction finishing on time?
Soon, like Mills-Pauley and her neighbors, we will have to endure blasting in our neighborhood. And workers will fill in a beautiful pond. Never mind that there are numerous locations around Putnam County where a Wal-Mart can be built on flat, commercial land without blasting the environment, without filling in a pond, without disturbing neighbors including John and Mattie Clay, Mike and Sally McDonald, and Dolores Martin (my wife) and me, who have lived in our homes for decades.
The politicians and government managers say they care. But their actions say they will do anything to bring in a business, including sell out their citizen’s neighborhoods.
If the politicians and city managers really care they will hold contractors accountable for disturbing neighbors.
What are the mistreated citizens getting? In Teays Valley, more homes. In Crooked Creek an overpriced highway route. And in Hurricane, a Wal-Mart bringing hundreds of low-paying jobs and thousands of cars into a formerly quiet neighborhood.
We remember when the Wal-Mart property was purchased by the Putnam County Development Authority to build a Marshall University satellite campus and an office park-not a 24-hour supercenter next to a neighborhood.
But we were lied to.
And the PCDA tried to keep the Wal-Mart project from the public, even hiring lawyers to try to stop PutnamLIVE.com from reviewing records regarding the project.
Forrest Gump once said, "Stupid is as stupid does."
Michael Douglas once said, "Greed is good."
Those statements speak volumes about Putnam County politicians, who turn into pinheads when it comes to construction noise.
If you opened a barbeque restaurant you would not be allowed to funnel smoke into your neighbor’s window. If you owned a radio station you would not be allowed to park a truck in front of someone’s home and blast music from the sound system into someone’s bedroom. But in Putnam County, if you own a tractor, the greedy politicians allow you to create enough noise to wake up citizens in their own home.
Contractors often speak of "Property rights" but turn into hypocrites when it comes to intruding on neighbors with their noisy construction equipment. People have the right to peace and quiet. Instead they are forced to listen to tractors in their homes while politicians turn their backs.
Contractors act like their right to make noise steamrolls over into your property. And greedy politicians and municipal managers let them get away with it.
That mentality has no business in a civilized world. I doubt any of the Putnam County politicians will have enough integrity to draft construction noise ordinances to protect residents. But they should. Immediately.
Progress is good. But progress at the price of peace of mind is bad. Contractors shouldn't have the right to steamroll over their neighbor's solitude to make a buck.
Contractors whine and say "tractors are noisy." And that's the problem. They need to invest in quieter equipment. Other industries are required to operate quiet equipment. You and I drive cars that have costly mufflers so we don't wake up neighborhoods when we drive down the street. In 1969 we put a man on the moon. It's not too much to ask the construction industry to build quiet tractors 37 years later.
Quiet equipment would also benefit construction companies and their workers. Many construction workers suffer hearing losses which drive up the cost of workers' compensation insurance.
If you care about your workers you will provide safe and quiet equipment for them to work with. If you care about your bottom line you will want to lower the cost of your workers' compensation insurance.
The politicians should demand this for the sake of the people that live in their communities and the sake of construction workers. Or they should endure someone parking a sound system in front of their private homes blasting the incessant noise of a tractor into their bedrooms at the crack of dawn-and play it all day long.Maybe THAT will get their attention!
