October 26, 2020
Monday AM

It is well past time for a new noise ordinance in the city of Ketchikan. If you confront someone about a noisy activity before 11am they will give you the most banal answer as to why they are going to do it anyway.

“Well, it’s legal…” It matters not to them if you are being disturbed, they have decided that now is the appropriate time to make noise and so they will just go right ahead, even if they could have just as easily started one or more hours later and it would have made no significant difference as to the timeliness of project completion – whatever the project be it construction or yard work.

It is well understood that Alaska is a working mans’ state. This generally means that people get up early, work hard, and quit by early afternoon. This is often to take advantage of the morning sun we get so much of in the summer. While the saying “make hay while the sun shines” is more of a down south saying I believe that most industrial working Alaskans subscribe to the same mindset. They believe the best time to work is right after sunrise.

This is enshrined in our noise ordinances presently as 19.02.030 Construction and Excavation – Nighttime restrictions. No person shall, within a residential area, or within a radius of 500 feet thereof: (a) (b) (c) (d) “…between the hours of 10:00 p.m. of one day and 6:00 a.m. the following day such that the sound therefrom annoys or disturbs a reasonable person of normal sensitivities residing in that residential area, except… public works in case of necessity and emergency vehicle noises.

This is what I would call the least protective time window that could be marginally considered to be appropriate. This allows for a maximum of 8 hours of “rest” time where one may be considered to be protected from egregious noise.

The vast majority of loud construction projects - and to a lesser but still relevant extent - outdoor power/lawn tool use (leaf blowers especially - a device with the decibel rating equivalent to a Rock concert) last 4 or fewer hours. Those that last longer could often be accelerated to be complete in 4 or fewer hours with the addition of extra helping hands or over the course of several days if not specifically important. (Which most aren’t.)

While it is understood that construction must happen, I believe that we need to start thinking about the mental wellbeing of local residents over the arbitrary start and finish times of short construction projects. Your lawns and gardens aren’t going anywhere, and if you need to pound, slam, cut, saw, drill, or run industrial power equipment, loading and unloading machinery, or the like then I believe those activities should be restricted to between 11 am and 5 pm unless doing so would cause an undue hardship that could be reasonably avoided. There is already a provision for a waiver to noise ordinance in the event these activities need to be completed very quickly on a one time basis. However I strongly believe that it should never again be the norm for these activities to be necessarily completed first thing in the morning.

Many people these days find themselves in unique work situations that are no longer dictated by a local start and finish time as dictated by our time zones, just as local job opportunities have decreased. No longer is a logging/construction job the norm in our city and state. The local call-to-work whistle doesn’t blow in the morning to start the sawmill, we have access to all manner of easily adaptable portable and inexpensive light sources, and we are not restricted to working in the summer months to have to complete construction tasks – outside of some hazardous activities that are best done when the wind is not blowing in gale mode. 11 AM to 8 PM allows well more than enough time to complete 90% of outdoor projects in residential neighborhoods without any undue hardships.

In addition, while we all hope for a vaccine to Covid-19 to return our world to some form of the previous normal, we must also realize that our society is now permanently changed. Even If such a vaccine were to be made available tomorrow (which is looking increasingly unlikely), our society as a whole has already gone through an irrevocable change in the way people live and work and go to school. We have been chained to their homes for these and other activities, and it could happen again at any time - for any amount of time. C-19 is undoubtedly not the last pandemic we will experience. The greater the world population the greater the risk of new transmissible pandemics. Scientists have been telling us this for years.

People’s homes are becoming more sacred than the increasingly irrelevant “workplace” and I believe it is high time this was reflected in our attitude toward arbitrary abusive early morning noises that could be easily postponed until a more socially appropriate time. Why should we prioritize the cutting of non-native grasses or easily rescheduled construction activities over the ability to sleep and enjoy being in our own homes?

C. Gillings
Downtown Ketchikan Resident
Born and raised local.
Ketchikan, Alaska

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The text of this letter was NOT edited by the SitNews Editor.

Received October 16, 2020 - Published October 26, 2020

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