Hard to deal with noise complaints need help

I own and operate a 300 acre open surface mine land. The mine opened in 1850's and ran for about 30 years and shut down with out any reclamation. We have been working the site for 7 years reworking the tailings and have turned 125 acres into farm land. Looking at 3 more years of cleaning up there mess before we get to the good stuff.

Part of our permitting process we offered to plant wind and noise abatement trees and shrubs for anyone with in a mile of us. Very few people took us up on the offer. We have helped some home owners replace windows, put up wooden privacy fences, shut down at predetermined times as long as they communicate with us and are respectable.

Our wash plant, centrifuges, dewatering systems, and water tanks are mobile. We are running in our current location about 30 days and don't plan on moving for about 60 days. About every 20 minutes of us working there is a lady that calls the office and complains. The next move is going to be just as bad with this lady. The county cops have been out about 10 times and the state cops have been out 4 times. In the last 20 days we have gotten a visit from EPA, OSHA, local health inspector, and MSHA. She has also sent us a couple of poorly written cease and desist letters. She will not let you get a word in so there is no way to talk to her and she will not respond to any written letters with anything that is readable. I even offered to by her house and land for what the tax assessment was.

Has anyone ever dealt with a person like this and have any pointers for me?

One company i worked for had a quarry with neighbors on both sides. They built a bund around the perimeter. It was probably 3-6 meters wide and 3-4 meters high. On top of the bund they stacked hay bales two wide and two high. Seemed to do the trick.

It sounds like you have made a good attempt to get along with the people around your job site. I don't think you will ever make that lady happy. ask others that live close to her I bet they all have had problems with her over something dumb.

If you have had all those agencies pay you a visit and they have not shut you down, I think you are in the clear.

You could always switch from defending your self, to offence and file harassment against her.

good luck.

We built a berm around the mobile plant. She is up hill from the working area and has line of site of the entire hill side. She lives in a old tin single wide. A stack of round bails at her property line should solve the issue, but I don't share her property line. I think she hears the 730's dumps and the 990 wheel loader. We are planning on working that hill side until September.

We have done a lot of tree planting and put a lot of thought on the setup for the main when we get to it, but we still have to clean up 50 acres of cleaning up the old mess before we get there.


I have talked to the people around her a few times. There was one man that wanted us to shut down by 3:00 a couple of Fridays. There is one lady that wants to work with us on how we replant the trees on this hill side, she says we are not good and giving them a random look.

I'm looking into the harassment side of this. We have recorded over 100 of her calls and getting a list of her calls from the phone company. I was thinking there was some MSHA rule about having to take phone calls from everyone.

I would either block her phone number or have it forwarded directly to voice mail. There are apps to do this on a smart phone. There's got to be someone who makes a land line phone with this feature.

Another option could be to hire an answering service and run all calls through it. Calls from her = take a message and send a memo at the end of the day. All other calls = forwarded directly to your office.

I would love to forward her number to 911 non emergency number.

I do have her going to her own voice mail right now. I had to cut down the message time to 60 seconds for her. Were to far out for good internet and with copper telephone lines you are limited at what you can do.

We deal with to many rules from different departments. Some tell us we can't do something when others say we must, but that's the good old government agencies at work.

If you are properly permitted, which it sounds like you are. I'd also assume you're in an industrial/ agriculture zoned area as well.

Personally, I'd look into the township or county ordinances for your particular zoned area and see if they have a maximum decibel
allowance. I'd then get a decibel meter and stand on her property line to get a reading to see if you're technically in violation of anything. We certainly have decibel limits up here in a few townships. Me thinks if all those acronyms stopped by and didn't start writing, they have nothing.

What she's hearing is the sound of PROGRESS !

Try getting a noise assessment done to see if you are really making that much noise. Your comments about the complaining party leads me to believe that she is hyper-sensitive and other. If you have good noise numbers and a log of your activities, you may be able to get her to cease making noise.

I write environmental permits for the State DOT's projects and run across similar folks. It boils down to the fact that if you are within standards, and you have made a good faith effort to mitigate, it does not really matter what someone has to say; as long as you have the proof. It could be that you end up with the authorities ignoring the continual complaints. Best of luck.

It looks like you're dealing with full bore crazy and that sucks. I've dealt with similar types and there's probably nothing you can practically do to make her happy. My suggestion would be to retain legal counsel.

There is no county noise ordnance. We are zoned for agriculture.

Everywhere I have looked only talks about the noise level for the employees and that it's a safe level at the edges of the property. There are noise blasting requirements, but there is no planed blasting from the drill samples. The noise level of some of the trucks that buy our rock and fines might be a bit loud,

We did not get any fines, but there is a couple of things they want us to upgrade.

I'll make some phone calls about getting a noise assessment done in the morning. I did learn some stuff from reading some of there websites.

If it were me, I wouldn't make any calls about getting an assessment done. I'd get a 200.00 sound meter meter from Graingers, walk over to the property line & hold it up in the air. That way you'll have one on site and can test the sound level anytime you please.

Like Former Wrench said.... get a noise assessment done, document everything you have done to mitigate the noise, retain a lawyer versed in such factors and sue the pixx out of her. One can sue for anything these days. Make her life a little hellish too. Funny how sometimes when it hits THEIR pocket book they can become more tolerant of things.

I was going through the nice lady’s messages for the day and she and she made a mistake and threatened my a couple of times (this was a first for her). I called the county and let them hear her message over the phone. The asked me to drive to the county jail where behavioral health was waiting for me.

They picked her up in the middle of the night and she had her magistrates hearing this morning. She is being held on a 72 hour hold and must give a 48 hour notice to leave. The earliest she can get out is 5 days.

I have a hearing tomorrow morning to get a restraining order.

Tomorrow after noon I have a meeting with someone that will do a noise assessment.

That escalated quickly

Red Roan said:

If it were me, I wouldn't make any calls about getting an assessment done. I'd get a 200.00 sound meter meter from Graingers, walk over to the property line & hold it up in the air. That way you'll have one on site and can test the sound level anytime you please.

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I agree, and I know crazy. I wouldn't worry too much to the extent of going beyond what you've been asked to do by the proper authorities. I would have thought she had exhausted her ability to harass you with authorities, they can be fooled once but they don't have time to be jerked around repeatedly.

Lucky break with the threats on tape. A restraining order should take care of it huh? I suspect that the county didn't "pick her up in the middle of the night" base only on a feud with the local quarry, that is they have a history with her.

I called the cops at 9:30 last night. They got her on a TDO (temporary detaining order) for being a danger to her self and or others. I got a phone call at 7:30 this morning saying she say the magistrate and that they are holding her for 72 hours with a 48 advanced notice of release. Who knows what metal health place they put her. I bet they picked her up in the middle of the night.

I have been dealing with her for weeks and I know the county has also been dealing with her for the same amount of time.

I was just going to suggest hiring council and getting a restraining order on the grounds of harassment. Sounds like this woman is a kook and nothing you do will make her happy. A local quarry had a bunch of 45' shipping containers they would stack up 5 high to create a large sound wall

I wouldn't let it lay if it was my quarry. Quarries these days have a tough enough time getting permitted. If you make an example to the fullest extent of the law, it will slow down any other opposition you may have festering on the other side of your property lines.

Well said grandpa . People today think milk comes from the grocery store , lumber from the lumber yard , electricity from the power company . They have no idea of process involved .......... It all comes out of the ground and takes smoke & noise to get the product to the consumer . And sometimes the consumer still aint happy with it .

The judge ended up doing a no contact order for 190 days.

I spent the day in town and talked to a lawyer. She decided to take a harassment case for 50/50 of the winnings. I never looked it up, but the old lady living in a tin single wide gets a good size monthly lottery check.

Your defiantly right about how hard it is to get permits. For me to get my permits I had to agree to clean up over 150 acres of mess from the late 1800's. They are making me do 10 years of work just so I can get into an old stream bed that they bypassed in the 1880's. From there old logs there were not able to get down to bed rock in a lot of places and back them they did not do a good job of cleaning the bedrock.