They Hope Justice Isn’t Deaf

Sometimes things just don’t work out the way they should. Like a couple of Saturday nights ago when I visited some folks in Costa Mesa with a 7-year-old problem a lot of you--along with me--may have been reading about.

The problem has to do with excessive noise from concerts at the Pacific Amphitheatre. Over the years about 300 families who live in the noise-landing pattern have been raising hell to get it turned down. Or turned off.

Last summer, the group, which calls itself the Concerned Citizens of Costa Mesa, won--well, sort of won--a long, drawn-out lawsuit in which Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard Beacom ordered the amphitheater’s operators not to violate county noise standards and directed county officials to take sound readings on concert nights to make sure the amphitheater was operating within the sound code.

Now the story gets complicated--which is why members of the CCCM complain that their victory was Pyrrhic. Instead of filing a class-action suit, the CCCM named three specific plaintiffs who accused the amphitheater of an excessive noise nuisance in and around their homes. But the lawsuit was in the courts so long that the plaintiffs moved away, so a young mother named Laurie Lusk--who, with her husband, Rusty, had been one of the original movers and shakers of CCCM--volunteered to be the lone plaintiff.

If you’re not thoroughly confused by now, then you’ll be quick to see that when the judge ordered the sound monitored, it had to be in front of the Lusk home, because she was the only remaining plaintiff when the decision came down. So that’s why, all summer long, a van full of sound equipment manned by a technician from the Orange County Health Care Agency has been parked in front of the Lusk home whenever a concert took place.

I decided to have a listen on Sept. 29 when the artists performing at the amphitheater were Kenny G and Michael Bolton. Now, my artist recognition started to tail off with Frank Sinatra when he worked with the Pied Pipers, so I didn’t know how noisy Kenny and Michael were likely to be. I figured--wrongly, it turned out--that any musicians who came along after Fred Waring were sure to be loud. But first, I went by to talk with Laurie Lusk.

She’s young, dark-haired, articulate and was quietly efficient with a first-grader home from school that day with a cold and an inquisitive preschooler.

Lusk filled me in on the background of the dispute--summarized above--and said that outraged residents had pooled money to hire their own sound expert and according to their monitor, the noise generated by rock groups had not moderated in the seven years that CCCM has been checking it. She does admit, however, that both the number of concerts and the percentage of heavy metal groups have been reduced--possibly because of the determination of the CCCM.

(I checked this with The Times’ resident expert, Jim Washburn, who feels that the reduction in concerts is due more to economics than fear of lawsuits. He also told me that of the amphitheater’s 27 listed concerts this season, only a half-dozen could be categorized as “loud”--including one heavy metal concert that didn’t appear on the official program.)

Lusk says that when she and her husband bought their home in 1983, they were told that a 5,000-seat amphitheater would be built on the adjoining state-owned land. When it came in at 17,500 instead and went immediately into loud rock groups, a delegation of homeowners called on the amphitheater operators who received them politely and said they just wanted to be good neighbors. According to Lusk, things have been going downhill ever since.

“We’ve installed dual-pane windows and doors,” she said, “but we can still hear it over the TV. And what are we supposed to do on hot nights? We can’t sleep, and the irritation gets to the pit of my stomach. We don’t want to close them down; we just want it quiet here. It seems to me unfair and unjust that they can do this to anyone. Why should we have to upend our lives and not make waves on behalf of big business?”

She seemed uneasy at the concert I planned to listen in on, but it was nearing the end of the season, and this was the only one I could make. So I showed up about 9:30 in front of the Lusk house two Saturday evenings ago.

Sure enough, there was the sound truck parked out in front. It was manned by a pleasant-enough man named Bob Gilbertson who understandably appeared bored. He and one of his associates had been trading off this duty since last March (and also intermittently in previous years).

He stressed that he wasn’t on anybody’s side, just doing his job for the health agency. He pointed out that under the county noise ordinance, once sound crossed its own property line, it can’t exceed the legal limit. He also said that since he has been monitoring the sound in front of the Lusk house, that hasn’t happened. He didn’t volunteer much information, but in answer to a direct question allowed that “Yes, it was louder last year and the year before, but we don’t know why. We haven’t done any analysis.”

Since I couldn’t hear a damned thing except an occasional riffle of muted music (Yes, Virginia, I was wearing my hearing aid), I decided to get a second opinion from the CCCM resident expert, whose testimony helped persuade the court to come down on the side of the homeowners. His name is Sam Lane, and he gets a much broader picture of the sound pattern by setting up his monitors at various points around the area.

He was tending one in the Lusk’s back yard on this evening, and I caught up with him there. He was wearing a UCLA sweat-shirt and was testy. He said I had chosen an untypical night to listen and there was no way I could understand the situation accurately without looking at all of his data over the past seven years. When I said I didn’t believe I had time to do that, he agreed to talk with me in the interests of “minimizing the misinformation”--a turn of phrase I rather liked.

He said that for me to check this out just once--especially on a night when the music was subdued--made no sense at all (even though I assured him I wasn’t writing an expose, just a what’s-going-on-here-anyway? type of piece). According to Lane, who is a professional technical consultant, the noise level has several times this year exceeded the legal limits in other parts of the affected neighborhood. He pointed out that when it approaches the legal limit in front of the Lusk house, it is much louder--in exponential increments--around homes closer to the amphitheater.

That’s why, Lusk explained to me after I talked with Lane, a whole new strategy has been devised by members of the CCCM. Lawsuits have now been filed by 34 individual members of the group claiming that the noise level from the amphitheater exceeds legal limits around their homes.

“Since the court ruled that this was a private nuisance affecting only our house,” said Lusk, “these other homeowners have filed similar suits. We needed to show them that a lot more people are willing to fight this in court.”

I drove home with decibels ringing in my head--and they’ve been ringing the whole time I was writing this. You understand, I’ve only scratched the surface here of the issues involved in this affair. For example, there’s the weather factor in carrying sound, the placement of the speakers to direct the sound, the dispute over what the proper decibel level should be, the confusion among state, county and local jurisdictions, all involved here. That sort of thing.

I guess the bottom line to me is that once more a group of citizens has demonstrated that they are not powerless when they feel their rights have been violated. The people who make up the CCCM have hung in for a very long time--and they’ve made it clear they aren’t about to give up the fight until their grievances have been redressed.

The last thing Laurie Lusk said to me was: “People around here are angry. We never sought money before; we just saw this as a case of right versus wrong. But now after seven years of expensive fighting, we feel justified in seeking money. And I’m still optimistic that right will win out.”