Ruling Threatens Redondo Noise Case

Redondo Beach Mayor Brad Parton said Wednesday that a recent court ruling poses a serious threat to the city’s noise pollution case against Southern California Edison and, if it stands, could force the city to revise its noise ordinance.

In a ruling May 10, South Bay Municipal Court Judge Deanne Smith-Myers rejected key city arguments involving noise measurements on grounds that they contradict a position the city took in an earlier noise case against Edison.

The city’s legal staff is studying whether to appeal the so-called estoppel order, which prevents Redondo Beach from using crucial acoustic measurements as evidence that the utility’s Harbor Drive power plant violated its municipal noise ordinance.

“If we cannot use that evidence, we wouldn’t have much of a case,” Parton said. City Atty. Gordon Phillips agreed, saying on Wednesday: “We wouldn’t be able to prosecute.”

Smith-Myers held that the city contradicted itself by asserting that it is able to quantify “ambient” noise levels, as opposed to noise solely from the Edison plant. In an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute Edison over noise pollution in 1988, the judge held, the city had argued that this could not be done.

The city asserts that its position in 1988 was that accounting for other noise sources would be difficult--not impossible.

Parton said that, if the city is forced to drop the noise case, it may have to change its noise ordinance so that the law applies to noise levels at the Edison plant property line, instead of the surrounding neighborhood.

“To me, this would point up that it’s very difficult to enforce anything other than a property line ordinance, so you can really identify the noise,” Parton said. “I have opposed that in the past, but I may end up supporting it.”