Port St. Lucie City Council member John Carvelli said he’s hearing a lot of complaints from communities near the corner of St. Lucie West and Cashmere boulevards, but folks have to speak up over the traffic these days.
“I went inside King’s Isle and said, ‘God, it is loud,’” Carvelli said.
The traffic-noise volume, Carvelli said, is created by the St. Lucie West Services District’s recent Basin 4E-5 Interconnect project and Harvey Stormwater Storage Project. Both involved removing trees that Carvelli said were acting as sound diffusers. Without them, he explained, there’s now a line without sound breakers between the Florida Turnpike and residential communities.
“It opened a channel for the sound of the turnpike to move up,” Carvelli said.
Dennis Pickle, manager and utilities director at the district, said the district will work with the city to see what can be done to reduce the noise. However, he pointed out the city approved the projects and the district paid the city $201,000 for mitigation related to the tree removals.
Pickle has tentatively offered the city up to $15,000 toward any sound mitigation projects it might decide to undertake. He had said the district’s board of supervisors would likely have to consider any additional expenses or efforts for sound mitigation.
“I feel for (affected residents) and want to be a good neighbor, but I have to pay attention to the taxpayers,” Pickle said.
Carvelli said three communities have been most affected by the new noise dynamics. “It’s Magnolia Lakes, the Palms (of St. Lucie West) and King’s Isle,” he said.
The district took sound readings last spring along Northwest Pleasant Grove Way in Magnolia Lakes, which runs parallel to Northwest Cashmere Boulevard. Pickle said a representative from Magnolia Lakes brought up the noise complaints then. The district hadn’t commissioned any readings before the Basin 4E-5 work to compare results, and Lake Harvey was completed since the readings were taken.
Sounds from the turnpike, according to the study, averaged about 55 decibels during the daytime. That’s about the volume of an indoor conversation. However, volume is only one part of how people perceive sounds. Conversations, for example, have breaks, whereas turnpike traffic is often unrelenting for hours.
The same study found traffic noise from Cashmere as heard along Pleasant Grove to average about 5 decibels louder. That doesn’t mean Cashmere’s traffic drowns out the turnpike’s. For example, when traffic decreases on Cashmere, the sounds from the turnpike are often still present.
Sounds often also have a cumulative effect. For example, a dishwasher is generally louder than a running faucet, but most can still hear a faucet while a dishwasher is operating. The combined sounds can irritate someone who’s unbothered by them individually.
Pickle said the district had to remove the trees for both the Basin 4E-5 and Lake Harvey projects. It did plant some replacement trees that are growing. Pickle said the district was limited in the space for preserving and replanting vegetation. In addition to the artificial waterways taking up some of the land where trees and vegetation had been, there’s the issue of accessibility for maintenance.
“To us, we feel we’ve done everything we could possibly do,” Pickle said.
Carvelli said he’ll push the city and district to keep looking for solutions to the traffic sound problems. Carvelli chided the district for what he considers to be predictable and avoidable fallout from the work. Among other things, Carvelli said the district probably didn’t have to remove as many mature trees as it had. “Realistically, they could have done something to stop the channel the sound that’s coming through,” he said.
Pickle said the city has asked him to attend a special meeting on Monday, March 19, at the council chambers, 121 W. Port St. Lucie Boulevard, to discuss the problem. That meeting is scheduled for 1:30 to 5 p.m.
Carvelli lives in one of the affected communities and represents St. Lucie West on the City Council.