The Gorham Town Council at its Sept. 4 meeting made a mockery of the democratic process by approving only those changes to the Gorham Land Use Ordinances that help Shaw Brothers application to develop an asphalt plant and quarry on the property on Mosher Road, previously owned by LaChance Brick, and none designed to protect residents from excessive noise.

The council referred the request by Shaw Brothers for ordinance changes to the Gorham Planning Board. The planning board and Deb Fossum and her staff in the Planning Office then spent countless hours and many late nights considering each of the proposed changes in detail. They passed their ordinance change recommendations to the town council and the council has now passed all the changes that benefit Shaw Brothers, but referred the ordinance changes regarding noise to the ordinance committee. Any changes recommended by the ordinance committee will not affect the Shaw Brothers application. The only councilors to question the council’s action were Shonn Moulton and Jane Willet.

The noise ordinance as it now stands has two statements, one very general and one specific: “Noise is required to be muffled so as not to be objectionable due to intermittence, beat, frequency or shrillness.” There is no way to enforce such a general statement. The specific statement is: “Noise may equal but not exceed during any consecutive 8-hour period an average of 75 decibels at 600 cps measured at any boundary line.” This is essentially meaningless. For one thing, this does not specify what type of decibel (A weighted, the human hearing range, or C weighted). For another, 600 cps is just one frequency of sound.

Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through air as waves of alternating pressure. The pitch of the sound is determined by the frequency of the waves. Middle C in the traditional scale is created by waves at a frequency of 440 hertz or cycles per second. The only ordinance limited frequency is 600 cps. This frequency is between 14 and 15 half steps up the scale above middle C, between D (587.33 cps) and D sharp or E flat (622.25 cps). This is the only tone that is specifically limited. Most objectionable noise is made up of a wide range of frequencies.

Even if the standard was not limited to a single frequency, the 75 decibel, eight-hour average level (in an A-weighted scale) is equivalent to something between a vacuum cleaner at 10 feet and a passing car at 10 feet, or a garbage disposal at 3 feet. To have that average level of noise means that at some times in the day or night the noise level could be higher than 75 decibels, such as listening to a truck or subway train at 10 feet. This level of noise over an eight-hour period for days is very stressful and harmful to health.

The council has also approved wording that would allow the planning board to approve an increase in the hours of operation to 24 hours/seven days a week to allow trucks to access gravel for the asphalt plant. It is limited to the area of operation within 100 feet of the “abutting use” (gravel piles for the asphalt plant). However, this means that the noise of trucks loading and unloading, tailgate banging and back-up alarms, will be allowed at night as well as in the daytime. That the council would approve this standard and not approve a more protective noise standard illustrates either how little they understand noise levels or how low their regard is for the well-being of the residents of this town.

Is this the kind of town council that we want to represent us? Three of them are up for re-election in November. Vote for people that will represent the residents of Gorham.

Mary Fagerson is a Gorham resident who researched sound waves and decibel levels to write this column.