Battle Lines Drawn Over Truck Noise

Frank Zamrock doesn’t need an alarm clock to rouse him out of bed. The retired businessman wakes up almost every day at 6 a.m. to the sound of trucks chugging past his 10-acre ranch on Happy Camp Road, toward a sand and gravel mine about half a mile away.

“This used to be a peaceful road,” said Zamrock, who bought the ranch in the unincorporated area just north of Moorpark 11 years ago. “Now it sounds like an army advancing first thing in the morning.”

For Zamrock and many other residents, moving from Los Angeles to the bedroom community of Moorpark and its surrounding areas meant finding safer and slower-paced neighborhoods, a chance to experience a bit of small-town life.

But with booming residential development and mining north of the city and toward Simi Valley, residents find themselves dealing with a growing number of gravel haulers, cement trucks and tractor-trailers. They say the heavy traffic is destroying the quality of life that attracted them to the town.

“We came here to get away from the smog and congestion in the San Fernando Valley, but it’s almost as bad as living on a major road in the San Fernando Valley,” Zamrock said. “The city is spending thousands and thousands of dollars trying to redevelop Moorpark to bring shoppers in. Well, the people don’t want to fight the trucks.”

The perception is echoed by residents throughout town. Someone was so peeved that they altered the word “Moorpark” on one of the city’s welcome signs. The sign on Walnut Canyon Road now reads: “Beauty is a Community Effort--Welcome to Truckmoor.”

In addition to the fumes, noise and traffic, residents also are worried about safety.

“If you pull out of the driveway, you could be hit by one of those trucks,” said Mary Crawford, a 17-year resident who lives off Walnut Canyon Road, which is part of California 23. She and others complain that trucks often swerve outside the double lines on curving roads.

“I could have had three near misses if I pulled out a second earlier,” she said.

The city has taken a number of steps to keep trucks from violating traffic rules. Broader solutions that would reduce the volume of traffic, such as creating a freeway bypass around the city, are frequently discussed. But to the residents, they appear to be pipe dreams.

Fed up, Zamrock and a number of residents in his ranching neighborhood earlier this year filed a lawsuit against the county and Transit Mixed Concrete Co., which generates the most truck trips of all the sand and gravel mine companies located just a few miles north of Moorpark.

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The group, called Fairview Neighbors, is trying to reduce the number of truck trips allowed the hauling company on California 23. The route swings past the ranchers, down past the site of an elementary school set to open in fall 1998, past City Hall and then onto the state highway, where it funnels into an even busier truck route, California 118.

However, truckers and company officials say they resent being vilified. And they say the complaints they hear from Moorpark residents sometimes smack of hypocrisy.

They argue that before Moorpark became incorporated in 1983, it was a primarily rural area where trucking was vital to the city’s survival. To haul the sand and gravel that built the city, not to mention goods from the now-closed massive chicken farm, Egg City, and the avocados, citrus and apricots from surrounding farms, it took trucks.

Once Moorpark became a city, it quickly developed as a bedroom community, where a large percentage of residents works in Los Angeles in the day and comes home to Moorpark at night.

“So the city’s vision of itself has never really taken into account its historical creation and its economic framework,” said Glen Reiser, a land-use consultant and former legal counsel for Transit Mixed Concrete.

Much of the city was built on the mining operations that predate most of the neighboring homes. Transit Mixed Concrete took over Blue Star quarry, which began operating in 1948. Wayne J. Sand & Gravel Co. also spread its roots north of Moorpark in that same year.

“The community grew on the trucking operation. Now they say ‘We want to be a bedroom community,’ ” Reiser said. “It’s common to hear that, but it’s hypocritical.”

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There is likely to be an even greater need for trucks to haul material if several projects get underway. The largest of them is Messenger, or the Hidden Creek housing project, which could add as many as 10,000 people to the city, which has a current population of 28,000 residents.

Another development, the Carlsburg project, which has already received City Council approval, would create 320 homes in the southeastern section of the city and set aside 73 acres for commercial use.

And mining operations will probably increase.

The Grimes Mine could expand, and Transit Mixed Concrete has already received approval from the county Board of Supervisors to expand its mines and also create an asphalt plant.

The area north of Moorpark and Simi Valley has become a popular area for mining companies.

The only other state-protected mineral resource area in the county is along the Santa Clara River. And it is becoming increasingly taboo to mine along the sensitive riparian habitat.

To residents, that means one thing--there are going to be even more trucks on the road.

Few formal studies have been conducted on the rate of truck traffic. But Caltrans does occasionally monitor truck traffic at the Moorpark intersections.

The following figures, however, are taken from one day, rather than averaged over a period of months or years, which would yield a more meaningful figure and account for fluctuations: On California 23 at High Street, 6,000 vehicles passed on a weekday in 1980. Of those, 10.9% were trucks. In 1995, 10,000 vehicles passed the same intersection on the study day and 14.9% were trucks.

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The Fairview Neighbors are prepared for a long legal fight. The lawsuit won’t get a hearing for some time.

“I think we’re looking at three months minimum because we don’t have records from the county,” said Kate Neiswender, the attorney representing the residents. “It’s 90% complete, but the 10% is taking forever.”

So in the meantime, Transit Mixed Concrete will be allowed by the county an average of 980 one-way trips per day, up to 1,180 one-way trips a day, on California 23. It’s an increase from what was allowed in the past, though the residents and the trucking companies can’t agree what was previously allowed.

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One of the more encompassing solutions to reduce traffic along the 118 and 23 appears to be a bypass that may resemble an inverted U starting at the 23 and 118 interchange, veering north toward Happy Camp and Broadway roads then southwest to connect back to the 118. The city has been talking about the bypass for years as a way to keep truck traffic off the 23 and 118 state highways that cut through Moorpark.

The city applied for a $100,000 federal grant to study, among other transportation issues, the 118 bypass or some type of additional road, but they won’t know until the end of the year whether they get the money.

“The ultimate solution to the truck problem on Los Angeles Avenue is a freeway that extends due west to the north and connects again in the west [to the 118],” said Ken Gilbert, the city’s director of public works.

But he concedes it looks like a longshot at this point.

“That’s your ultimate bypass that may never get built,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s not on the horizon. There’s no imminent funding source.”