Some Seek Lull in Laguna

Two-year-old Torrey Menne bolts from his front yard in tears when motorcycles thunder down Pacific Coast Highway on weekends.

All day, Lyn Chevli hears the rumble of bulldozers and dump trucks at the Treasure Island construction site, sounds she and neighbors fear will only be replaced by the hum of tourist traffic once the five-star resort opens.

Whether the noise culprits are Harley riders or construction workers, barking dogs or pilots of banner planes, late-night partygoers or boaters with their high-speed pleasure craft, there is a growing consensus that Laguna Beach is getting too loud. And residents want the volume turned down.

This arts-oriented community is hardly the first place to huff about noise pollution. But “Lagunatics,” as some dub the citizenry, are more protective than most of their town, with its postcard-perfect ambience, artsy downtown, jagged coastline and soaring green hills. And to many residents, the noise is symptomatic of larger growth issues they say are harming the environment and threatening the easygoing lifestyle of their seaside digs.

In response to public complaints, city officials are moving on different fronts to address the noise issue. Officials are considering whether to revise the city’s 25-year-old noise ordinance. Police are targeting motorcycles that make too much noise. They cited dozens of riders over Labor Day weekend.

“We can’t just sit back and lose our quality of life,” said Laguna Beach City Council member Toni Iseman. “I’m not giving up. I will continue this until we see that there is some kind of enforcement and some new ordinances on the books.”

For many anti-noise activists, the charm that lured so many painters and photographers to Laguna’s sandy shores a century ago is fading.

Weekends start off with a buzz. The day-trippers have arrived, circling streets and alleys, hunting for parking.

“I don’t ever go downtown in the summer on the weekend because it’s traumatic,” said Chevli, a 69-year-old sculptor and writer who moved here in 1961.

But home hasn’t been much of an escape. Chevli lives in an apartment on the south side of town, across from Treasure Island, site of the city’s biggest and most controversial development. Work began in 1998 and when the 30-acre, $150-million compound is finished, there will be a 275-room hotel, 17 homes and 14 condominiums.

Laguna already brims with 3 million visitors a year, mostly summertime visitors headed to the beach or the signature Festival of the Arts. Many residents wonder if Treasure Island will bring more crowds--and noise.

Among the more immediate noisemakers is the Harley crowd. These are not the law-abiding boomers escaping from the button-down worlds they live in the rest of the week. These are the riders who reconfigure or cut off their tailpipes so everyone can hear them coming.

“They are just totally upon you. It’s a true interruption in your thoughts and in your conversation. It’s a total interruption of your space,” said Patricia Halman-Menne, describing how her son Torrey heads indoors when he hears them coming. “They will send him into the house, crying. They don’t have to be that way.”

Halman-Menne, 36, lives with her husband and their son in a 1929 home that is one of the few with a front yard along Pacific Coast Highway. She has grown accustomed to the rush-hour traffic. But the weekend bike traffic is simply too much.

“I’m not an old fuddy-duddy,” she said. “It’s not about taking away great business from Laguna.”

This past summer, at the direction of the City Council, police began enforcing a ban on modified mufflers in a crackdown that peaked Labor Day weekend, when more than 130 citations were issued. Some observers argue the effort did more harm than good, igniting more rebellious behavior by some and chasing other riders away, leaving bars and restaurants with fewer customers.

In any case, officials have resorted to a friendlier campaign that smacks more of Laguna’s laid-back attitude--at least for now. Extra warning signs have been posted outside popular biker hangouts. And in a flier making the rounds, Police Chief Jim Spreine extends an olive branch, inviting bikers back as long as they cooperate.

“All motorcyclists are welcome and are encouraged to come into this community as long as they respect the peace and tranquillity,” Spreine wrote in the bulletin.

The conflict has helped fuel efforts to better regulate noise.

In some cases, there is little the city can do. It has virtually no control over certain types of noise, such as banner planes that crisscross the city during summer. These planes are regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency has expressed little interest in stricter noise rules.

The Planning Commission held a workshop last month in response to a variety of complaints, inviting noise consultant Vince Mestre, a local resident, to educate the public about the city’s noise ordinance.

The current noise ordinance has not been significantly strengthened in about 25 years. A quarter of a century ago, hawkers and peddlers were listed as potential noise nuisances, along with radios, loudspeakers, drums and large trucks.

The ordinance mainly follows the tradition of common law, which requires noises to be addressed if they are annoying, leaving police to make judgment calls. Is a barking dog or party a nuisance if two neighbors complain? Three? More?

“In Laguna, there’s no real clear or easy way to know whether there’s a nuisance or not,” said Mestre, the noise consultant.

In contrast, Newport Beach has assigned specific decibel levels to certain noises and allows police to arrest noisemakers after they ignore one formal warning that they are being “loud and unreasonable.”

Laguna Beach’s action on the noise ordinance issue is at least two months away. Members of the Planning Commission said they will take up the matter in February when the commission meets with the City Council in the first and only joint session of the year.

“Everyone loves Laguna,” said Fred Droz, chairman of Laguna’s 2030 Vision Committee. “But the thing that makes it so popular is that it’s a small village. And on the other hand, if you have a lot of people, you don’t have a small, little town anymore.”