One hundred and ten decibels

Coming back to construction, and to noise levels. There are a significant number of projects in the city now that generate huge noise from excavation. I have measured them at one hundred and ten decibels. This is excavating work for deep foundations.

For the people living right next to it, this becomes either unlivable or — arguably, at close range — genuinely harmful to hearing. At further ranges it is a mental health question.

What I could not find out

I do not know whether this is the case, and it goes in the bucket of things to be verified: I am not aware of any permitting structure that lets residents know how long noise is allowed to continue at this level, or where you can see the permit. My wife tells me there is essentially no check on how long projects can go on operating noisily for. I think she is correct.

I tried to establish this about a construction site near where we live. I got nowhere. No response from the building company — and this is a site making loud noise that affects our quality of life. You can hear it in our apartment throughout the day, and we have a right to this information.

And there is no government body measuring this independently, or able to provide the information.

So again, it adds to this cascade of operational failures — which is what I would call it — coming from the municipality.