Panel Tables Wachs Measure to Require Sound Walls

North Hollywood residents bothered by freeway noise, who had pinned their hopes on a sound wall proposal by Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs, left City Hall disappointed Tuesday.

The council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee voted to table Wachs’ motion to require builders to mitigate freeway noise on construction by means of sound walls and other measures such as landscaping and earth mounds. He also asked the city to examine ways to lessen freeway noise in existing neighborhoods.

Instead, committee Chairman Hal Bernson advised the Planning Department to merely consider freeway noise mitigation when reviewing projects. He said he did not want to make it a council mandate that the sound walls be installed because “I think we need to be a little flexible.”

State Level

Bernson also told the North Hollywood residents and others concerned about noise in older neighborhoods that they would have to take their problems to the state Department of Transportation.

“We can’t solve all the problems of the world,” Bernson said. “We don’t have the funds to do it.”

Caltrans has a backlog of 170 locations in the state where sound walls are needed, and about 100 of those are in the Los Angeles area, said William H. Minter, state sound wall project engineer. Minter said it could take as long as 25 years to build walls in all the locations listed.

But a neighborhood in North Hollywood--where residents have long complained about noise and where a truck careened into two houses last year--is not even on that list because the houses were built after the freeway. Minter said the state holds the city responsible for noise mitigation there because city officials allowed the houses to be built.

Action Called Charade

Bob Brice, who lives near the accident site on Babcock Avenue, called the committee’s action a charade.

“They raised false hopes up in the people and then they just blew them out of the water,” he said.

Wachs’ field deputy, Rick Kunz, said he did not know whether the councilman would reintroduce the motion before the full council. But Kunz said that any future motion might again request that developers be required to install sound walls at construction sites, but probably would not include allowances for building sound walls in established neighborhoods because it is too expensive for the city to do.