Peace At Last

It's a gorgeous autumn afternoon, the birds are chirping, and the fountain by my back porch provides a soothing tinkle. The noise decibel reading on the back porch has dropped from 52 to 39 since the fans were turned off several days ago. (Since a 3 db increase means a doubling of sound energy, that suggests that the golf course fans and neighborhood heat pumps have been providing more than 90% of the ambient noise for the past few months.) Let's enjoy the quiet ambience of MacGregor Downs during the period between now and May. Fan season will be here again soon enough. We've had advice from a number of folks about strategies to pursue next spring, so look for things to heat up again when the weather does and when fan season approaches.

Traffic vs. Golf Course Fans

The feature story on the front page of the News & Observer in a recent Sunday edition (Sept. 9, 2007) detailed growth, congestion, and noise issues along the recently opened I-540 section north of Raleigh. One down side of the freeway is found in the caption to a series of photos that reads:

Clarence and Kathy Cox used to hear bird calls outside their home in Knightdale. But with I-540 nearby traffic noise prevails... Kathy Cox gets a reading of 65.6 decibels.

Hey! 65.6 decibels! That's almost as loud as the MacGregor Downs Golf Course Fans.

Do you have resources or suggestions?

Don't forget that this blog is the companion web site to the MacGregor Golf Fan Noise Resources web site. If you're not familiar with the nature and extent of the noise problem in MacGregor Downs, be sure to visit that site. If you have resources you would like to include, or suggestions for additional information that we need, please send your thoughts to fan.noise@mac.com.

Fans vs. Freeway

Have you walked across the pedestrian overpass that crosses over the beltline just down the hill from Cary Parkway (toward Crossroads Mall)? Yesterday afternoon I took noise readings from the pedestrian walkway about 75 feet from each end of the pedestrian bridge. This was 3:30 PM on a typical August Sunday afternoon, from a high altitude perch. On the east side, standing where the greenway runs along the earthen berm that shields the apartments from freeway noise, noise levels were running most of the time in the range of 62-68 dba. On the west side, where DOT built a sound barrier for residents, the walkway descends fast enough that the wall begins to have an effect within 75 feet of the bridge, and readings were in the 60-65 dba range. On either side of the freeway, backyards would measure significantly lower (because of the wall on one side or the earthen berm on the other). Some residences in MacGregor Downs are now being subjected to fan noise levels on a par with being suspended in the air near an 8-lane freeway. (See MacGregor Downs residential noise levels.)

No response from the club

For more than a month several residents located near the #5 green have been attempting to learn what the club's long term plans are for installation and operation of the fans. On July 22 I wrote an e-mail to Steffie Safrit that ended with the following plea:

"Steffie, I strongly encourage you to push the club to come up with some creative proposals ASAP. So far we know little about the golf course management's plans for long term use of the fans and mitigation of the noise. All we know is that the present noise level and fan schedule is intolerable. The ball is in your court."

Since then I've had not one word of response from Steffie, in spite of additional requests for information and invitations for dialog. When others have called, the reply has been to deny that there's any problem with the fans and to claim the noise levels are in some sense "normal."

It's worth reading what the USGA Turf Grass web site has to say about noise. At that site, the paragraph on fan noise reads as follows:

The auditory effects of fans are also a consideration. Most courses have home sites near some of their greens today, and some residents may be close enough to hear the fan motor noise. Educating your neighbors about the importance of the fans is essential for the superintendent. Letters sent to these homeowners each spring discussing the agronomic value and fan operational hours may help reduce complaints.

Noise being "close enough to hear" is hardly an apt description for noise that inhibits conversation and drives neighborhood residents to retreat from their back porches. This paragraph strongly suggests that what the USGA considers the norm is noise levels considerably lower than what many are experienceing in MacGregor Downs.

What I learned chatting with folks ...

This afternoon I spent a couple of hours cruising the neighborhood and chatting with folks who live near the fans. An interesting pattern began to emerge ...

1. When someone calls the club management to comment on fan noise, the response is always, "Gee, there haven't been any issues with the fans." This, of course, is designed to give the impression that everyone else thinks the fans are just fine, and to make the other feel like he must be supersensitive or something to think the fans are a problem.
2. The next step is always to offer to cut the nearby fan off from 6-9 PM and AM (as if having a root canal for 18 hours per day rather than 24 hours per day would somehow make it satisfactory). This move is to convey the impression that the club management is being "reasonable" and has made concessions to settle the issue.
3. Residents who raise questions about the fans are told, "It's happening everywhere. That's how golf courses operate now."

Putting this pattern together makes it abundantly clear why the club has so resisted efforts for a neighborhood dialog on the fans. Their strategy is based on NOT having people talking to each other. Isolate the opposition, and buy them off one at a time by allowing a few hours of peace and quiet each day. (Did any of us move to MacGregor Downs with the expectation that the club management would be dictating when we could use our porches and yards?)

And the claim that "It's happening everywhere" is a half truth at best. Most golf courses are not in the process of digging up and replacing all their greens. So any move toward mega fans is still years away for the great majority of clubs. There are a few, like MacGregor Downs and Porters Neck GC in Wilmington, who have bought into the mega fan strategy hook, line, and sinker. Maybe this happens because the fans are being pushed hard by the "greens reconstruction" industry. But clubs that follows this route run into neighborhood opposition (as in Wilmington and Chapel Hill). Most clubs that opt for large fans use them on only a few greens. (MacGregor currently has the fans on 12 greens.) As heavily settled as the MacGregor Downs neighborhood is, the mega fan approach is a horrible one. The cumulative impact on property values is in the millions of dollars, and this is in addition to loss of the peace and tranquility of the most affected homes. This process is most certainly NOT happening everywhere, and we can't afford to let it happen here.

Why neighborhood residents need to speak up

The choice isn’t between golf or noise. There are numerous solutions to the noise problem that will allow for protection of the greens. Some include

• Manual or more closely controlled watering programs that reduce the need for evaporative cooling
• Smaller, quieter fans
• Sound barriers behind fans or other means of noise mitigation

The club management isn’t going to bite the bullet and look for better alternatives unless residents make it clear that current operations are unacceptable. It’s time to do that. None of us were looking for a house with the noise of a freeway in the backyard when we purchased our homes in MacGregor Downs. And when you try to sell your house, buyers won’t be looking for that either. (And don’t forget that real estate laws require disclosure, so even if you try to sell in the dead of winter when the fans are quiet as a mouse, you’ll have to list fan noise on the disclosure form if you live in one of the many MacGregor houses that are significantly impacted.)