South Burlington residents who live around the Vermont National Country Club are demanding that the city intervene to limit what they’ve described as unbearably loud noise from contractors breaking ledge rock to build a luxury house nearby.
The continued drilling “completely violates our every right when we literally are forced from our own home to maintain our sanity and well being,” said Lisa Angwin in an email Wednesday.
Angwin, who has lived on Golf Course Road since 2015, works from home most days. “As I sit here, it’s all I can hear,” she said — even with “doors closed, with noise canceling headphones on and music playing.”
The drilling has been taking place in the normally quiet, upscale neighborhood for more than three weeks — seven hours a day, five days a week — according to residents who came to an Oct. 16 city council meeting to demand action.
“It’s absolutely unbearable, incessant,” resident Beth Zigmund told councilors at the meeting. She pleaded with officials to make it stop.
Zigmund, a physician, also complained last year when noise from construction racked the neighborhood for about two months.
The ongoing construction noise measures up to 90 decibels on her back deck, Zigmund said, exceeding the level at which OSHA recommends protections. It has forced her to leave her home and miss meetings and has disrupted her work day, she added.
“They are clearly violating the nuisance ordinance but the city doesn’t want to do anything about it because they’ve already issued the permits,” she said in an interview.
The construction is taking place in the large development’s latest subdivision off Long Drive in an area with extensive ledge underground. It is one of several approved in the original master plan for the Vermont National Country Club development, which includes a golf course and roughly 350 homes over 434 acres of land, according to Paul Conner, director of the city’s planning and zoning department.
The new subdivision will consist of 10 single-family homes, of which two have been built.
The zoning permit for a new house at 87 Long Drive — the current source of drilling — was issued on July 10, but residents say the noise has been an ongoing problem for several years, as more houses have been added to the development. It was the worst in 2020 when the hammering continued for more than four months, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, residents said.
“The challenge here is striking a balance between the right to construct and methods of construction that can work,” Conner said.
The city is working with the contractor — Elevation Construction, LLC — to address concerns, according to Conner, who shared an Oct. 23 memo outlining the conversation between the city and the contractor. It states the contractor has been asked to explore mitigation measures, to evaluate alternative options to drilling, limit the duration and frequency of noise, and explore alternate locations for the house it is building there.
“We acknowledge this is not a fun situation for anyone,” Conner told residents at last week’s meeting. “This is disturbing. It’s loud.”
His team has also worked with the contractor to make the noise less constant, which also means that noise will continue for a longer total period of time, Conner said.
“Staff has worked with the developer on each of the items outlined in our letter of October 23rd,” Conner said in an email. “In the event that the conditions of that letter are not met, the City may choose one or more enforcement actions.”
Todd Riordan, founder and owner of Elevation Construction, LLC did not respond to multiple emails and calls. Conner shared an email Riordan sent to city officials and residents on Wednesday stating, “we are aiming to conclude the majority of the basement excavation work by the end of the day friday, 10/27.” Riordan added that “there may be additional activities that require rock work, however we are very close to the conclusion of the consistent hammering that has been so intrusive.”
Residents continue to question why the city hasn’t simply enforced its own public nuisance ordinance — and how many more noisy summers they’ll have to endure.
The eight-page ordinance states that noise shall be “deemed unreasonable” when it “disturbs public peace and affects the quality of life within the community.” It says that fines up to $800 can be assessed and that the police and city manager have authority to act on it.
The ordinance also states, “Noise shall be deemed to be unreasonable when it disturbs … the peace or health of a person.”
City officials last week debated who is responsible for enforcing the ordinance. Conner said that the town’s legal counsel felt enforcement should go through the zoning office, not the police.
Andrew Chalnick was the only councilor who spoke in support of resident complaints last week, arguing that the city should enforce the ordinance.
He said this week the hammering is “unreasonable” and in violation of the ordinance. “The situation has been going on for a long time and I think the noise ordinance should be fully enforced,” he said in an email.
City Manager Jessie Baker this week referred questions to Conner.
On Tuesday afternoon, the South Burlington neighborhood of mostly large single-family homes, many with spectacular views, echoed with the grinding noise of drilling.
“It’s a pain in the ass. It’s loud. It’s constant,” said Golf Course Road resident Paula Cooper, who was exiting her garage with a leaf blower on Tuesday afternoon.
Others nearby have also preemptively raised concerns about ledge blasting at the proposed Wheeler Park development, at the north corner of Dorset Street and Park Road, a project that is currently tied up in environmental court. More than 135 families have expressed opposition to the neighboring project that involves blasting rock ledges to build 32 homes in what they say is a protected parkland and wildlife habitat.
“The pain and anxiety the noise produces is not healthy, and the city is an accomplice to this negligence,” said Golf Course Road resident Don Angwin, Lisa Angwin’s husband. “It really is unconscionable how the city defends the developers ‘right to build’ at the expense of residents.”
