Bus Brouhaha : Residents Near Depot Complain of Pre-Dawn Noise, Fumes

Afternoons are quiet on Tarrant Avenue, just outside the Compton city boundary. The occasional television murmurs inside a house, and longtime residents chat across driveways and fences.

But at 5 a.m. this neighborhood is jumping, and people are fuming.

The problem, neighbors say, is the Laidlaw school bus depot in their midst. Between 4:30 and 7 a.m. every weekday, nearly 100 bus drivers rev their engines, honk horns and shout--as close as 15 feet from the residents’ back doors.

“It’s like someone’s running a vacuum cleaner on top of your head when you’re trying to sleep,” resident Ben Boorman said.

After 10 years of noise and exhaust and at least three years of complaining to county authorities, residents have stepped up their fight against the rumbling nemesis.

Fourteen households recently sent affidavits to Deputy Dist. Atty. Erica Martin, who said she may use the documents to lodge a complaint against the school bus company.

Residents are happy that a county official seems to have taken an interest in their cause, but their optimism is cautious. The county Health Department has twice found that Laidlaw drastically exceeded the county’s noise ordinance, yet the horns still honk before dawn.

The district attorney’s office has had the case for nearly 12 months, but no complaint has been filed. To file a civil complaint, the county must have evidence of three distinct transgressions, Martin said, so prosecutors have been waiting for a third noise study to be completed by the Health Department.

The studies could show that Laidlaw has violated air pollution standards as well as noise standards.

“Some days I can barely breathe, and my throat and eyes are itchy and irritated practically every day,” said Wanda Tate, a 36-year resident of Tarrant Avenue.

Laidlaw Transit Inc. officials admit that their bus depot at 15500 Avalon Blvd. has violated county noise standards for years but say they have been trying to fix the problem.

Laidlaw managers have tried to create sound walls out of large buses, have admonished drivers to be quieter and have cut the number of buses from 150 to 100 at the Avalon Boulevard depot, said Jim Murchie, Laidlaw vice president.

But residents, many of whom moved into the neighborhood 25 years before the bus company, say Laidlaw’s noise-reduction measures simply have not worked.

“I really feel bad for the neighbors,” Murchie said. “I know most people are asleep at 5 a.m., but that’s when we do our business. That’s when we pick kids up for school.”

Laidlaw intends to move the bus depot to an industrial park this summer, Murchie said, but the Boormans have heard that promise three times in the past two years, they said.

All the neighbors know is that the racket continues.

“The Laidlaw buses start as early as 4:45 a.m. We are awakened by not only the engines, but the screeching noises while they are testing the brakes, and the loud obnoxious drivers as they laughingly exchange obscenities or discuss their past, present and future social calendars,” wrote Deborah Stephens Browder and Marie Stephens in their affidavit.

“We need Help! Help! Help!” wrote Thelma Nelson, a 38-year resident of neighboring East 154th Street.

Two county Health Department noise studies, conducted in May, 1990, and February, 1991, found that the Laidlaw bus yard exceeded the county noise standard of 47.5 decibels for the area by 13 to 25 decibels. In one case, noise from a bus simply driving past reached 82 decibels, according to the Feb. 13 study.

However, Murchie said his company conducted its own test last week and found that the bus yard was within the legal limit for noise. Neighbors all noticed the bus yard was unusually quiet last week, Boorman said.

Even if Laidlaw does quiet its buses or move the yard this summer, the county’s contract school bus company could still face charges based on past transgressions, Martin said.

Anita Boorman would like to see Laidlaw slapped with an injunction. She would be happier if the bus company moved. But she knows that for a while yet, she can be sure of only one thing: being awakened before dawn.

“Every single morning at 4 o’clock I wake up and put in earplugs so I can try to get back to sleep,” she said. “Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t.”