The State - News from June 15, 1987

Neighbors of Werner Erhard’s rural human potential training center in Santa Rosa complain that screams, yells and chants coming from the center can be heard a mile away. About 24 people protested the proposed expansion of the center before the Sonoma County Board of Zoning Adjustments. The center is located on a 473-acre site in a heavily wooded canyon 50 miles north of San Francisco. Residents who live within a few hundred feet of the property line said the unsettling noises can be heard at all hours of the day or night. But center officials insist the exercises that generate the noises are limited only to certain daytime hours. A decision on the proposed expansion, which would increase the number of staff and participants from 225 to 427, was delayed until Aug. 13 to allow time to conduct a noise study.