LA HABRA : Noise-Weary Residents Want Relief

Ruth Buckner is so used to feeling her house tremble every time a large truck roars along the highway out front, she no longer fears it’s an earthquake.

Buckner, 63, said she has given up talking to her neighbors in the front yard because traffic noise on Imperial Highway drowns out her conversations and disrupts the tranquillity in the Landmark and Classic Homes neighborhoods.

About 260 area residents have the same complaints.

They say that since parts of the block wall on the highway were torn down two years ago so the county could build a flood control channel, traffic noise has caused grief and lowered property values.

Some residents recently asked the City Council why large sections of the wall were replaced with a chain-link fence instead of another six-foot-tall cinder-block wall. They were disappointed with the response.

“We have very little control over the process at this point,” City Manager Lee Risner said about the flood channel project.

The residents, however, contend that it is the city’s responsibility to make sure that the wall, landscaping and sidewalk are installed.

“As it is now, it’s an eyesore, and we need the wall to block out the highway noise,” Buckner said.

Her neighbors overwhelmingly agree.

“It looks like hell,” said Ed Sandoval, 67, who lives across from the new flood control channel. “Before they tore down the wall, we didn’t get the vibrations or the sound that we get now, and the chain-link fence makes this place look like a ghetto.

“It’s real bad and we’re all upset,” Sandoval added. “How can the city or county or whoever did this authorize tearing down that wall and putting up that chicken wire in it’s place?”

County officials said the county and the city agreed to demolish the existing wall and replace it with chain-link fence, construct a sidewalk outside the fence and beautify the area with trees and plants inside the fence, where the channel flows.

“I think there’s been some misunderstanding,” said Francisco Alonso, senior planner of the building department for the county Environmental Management Agency, which is in charge of the project.

“The residents somehow were led to believe that the block wall would be replaced, but that was never the intent,” he said.

“Citizens can have the agreement changed. It’s not too late. I think all parties need to meet.”

If the agreement is changed so that a block wall is installed instead of the fence, approval from the California Department of Transportation would be necessary, because Imperial Highway is a state road.

Meanwhile, the County Board of Supervisors is expected to give a Laguna Beach landscaping firm the go-ahead to design landscaping plans at a cost of about $22,000, Alonso said. Total cost of installing the fence, sidewalk and landscaping is estimated at about $150,000, he said.

Alonso said it’s up to the city to make changes in the agreement and that the approximately $150,000 slated for the project could pay for a new block wall and sidewalk but no landscaping.