Santa Rosa asphalt plant comes under scrutiny

Neighbors of a Santa Rosa asphalt plant are demanding the city review the facility’s noise levels and hours of operation, claiming its recent expansion has failed to reduce nighttime work as promised.

Opponents of the BoDean Co. plant on Maxwell Drive delivered a petition with 1,085 signatures to the City Council last week calling for the review of operations at the 6-acre site.

In addition, more than a dozen residents have filed complaints with the city’s code enforcement division, claiming that smoke and odors from the plant raise health concerns and noise from nighttime operations makes it hard for them and their children to sleep.

“It’s crazy,” said Flaman McCloud, who lives with his 5-year-old son in a home on Cleveland Avenue just across the rail line from the plant and who has filed one of the complaints. “They were just doing it all night, and we didn’t get no sleep.”

The complaints, coordinated by a group called Citizens for Safe Neighborhoods, are the latest tactics in a long-standing campaign by West End residents to pressure the city to rein in the operations at the plant, which has operated since at least 1961.

Other measures have included odor complaints to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and a pending lawsuit challenging the city’s 2012 approval of three new 82-foot-tall storage silos. The suit lost in Sonoma County Superior Court but is on appeal.

In presenting the petition to the City Council last week, Kevin Pryne, a contractor who lives in a neighborhood of modest early 20th-century bungalows east of the plant, called the noise and truck traffic an “out-of-control situation” that “makes a good night’s sleep hard to come by.”

“We remain in disbelief that to this day, the plant operates whenever it pleases,” Pryne said, claiming it operates “round the clock.”

City Manager Sean McGlynn said the city was investigating and would report the results to the council.

The most recent round of complaints appears to have been prompted by a period of nighttime asphalt production related to the widening of Highway 101 in Petaluma. Dean Soiland, owner of the plant, said it was a big job but not unlike road jobs the plant has supplied for years.

“That was a pretty significant project that we were proud to be a part of,” said Soiland, whose company also operates quarries in Forestville and on Porter Creek Road.

Caltrans conducts major roadwork at night to reduce delays for drivers. This requires that warm asphalt be produced shortly before it is delivered to job sites. BoDean’s three new storage silos, installed in 2013 at a cost of $1.5 million, were designed to allow the plant to run more efficiently by producing larger batches of asphalt that the silos keep warm until delivery is needed.

BoDean general manager Bill Williams said the upgrades have allowed the plant to reduce its impact on neighbors, including the amount of time the plant operates at night. He estimated that nighttime production has been cut in half following the addition of the new storage silos.

“One of the main benefits of the extra storage was to produce during the day and only load trucks at night when needed, thus shifting any noise associated with production to the daytime hours,” Williams said in a statement.

City Councilman Gary Wysocky said he recalled the claims from 2012 that the silos project would reduce the need for the plant to operate at night and felt an explanation was needed.

“I think it’s worthy of an inquiry at a minimum,” Wysocky said.

Allen Thomas, a land-use consultant and West End resident spearheading the opposition, said residents just want to know what limits are applicable to the plant’s operations.

“What the neighbors basically want is an explanation of what they can and cannot do at the plant,” Thomas said.

The company’s use permit places a production cap of 760,000 tons per year on the facility, but is silent on hours of operation. The company claims it needs to and has a vested right to operate the plant at nighttime in order to supply asphalt for road work projects. But Allen questions that claim and blames the city for allowing the size and scope of operations to expand without proper oversight or environmental review.

“What gives them the right to operate 24 hours a day? Because we’ve never seen any kind of permit that says that, ever,” Thomas said. “We just believe the city has kind of allowed this thing to morph into whatever it wants to be.”

The city has taken the position that the long history of the site, which has been continuously permitted for some type of asphalt plant since 1961 and expanded in 1987, means the operation is effectively grandfathered in. Just how much protection from modern zoning or other city regulations that provides is an open question.

Neighbors argued that the “legal nonconforming use” of the property restricts the operation from expanding in any significant way, and that BoDean should have been required to perform a full environmental review of the new silos. City staff and the City Council, on a split vote, accepted the company’s position that the new silos were more akin to an equipment upgrade than an expansion.

The recent spurt of nighttime work and renewed irritation of neighbors begs the question of what other rules the company is exempt from, Thomas said.

“OK, if they’re grandfathered, do they have to comply with air quality or water quality rules? Of course, they do,” Thomas said. “So are they exempt from noise ordinances?”

A noise study commissioned by the group concluded the plant exceeds city noise levels whatever time of the day it operates.

The city’s noise ordinance reads that “It is unlawful for any person to operate any machinery, equipment, pump, fan, air conditioning apparatus or similar mechanical device in any manner so as to create any noise which would cause the noise level at the property line of any property to exceed the ambient base noise level by more than five decibels.”

The report by Illingworth & Rodkin, Inc. of Petaluma found the noise from the plant exceeds the limits during three different time frames, based on sound monitoring from the closest residential area.

The report shows it exceeds the daytime limit of 55 decibels by up to 9 decibels, exceeds the evening limit of 50 decibels by up to 14 decibels, and exceeds the nighttime limit of 45 decibels by up to 19 decibels.

The ordinance further explains that a number of factors are taken into consideration when determining whether noise limits have been violated, including the level, intensity, duration, time of day and nature of the noise. It also considers the distance of the noise from where people sleep, and the “nature and zoning of the area within which the noise emanates.”

Williams said the company is currently reviewing noise levels to make sure the plant is in compliance with regulations. “As far as we know right now, we are in compliance regarding noise,” he said.

“We have sought to engage the neighborhood to collaborate on workable solutions, but we’ve been directed by the West End Neighborhood Association to only talk with their lawyers,” Williams said.

Chief Building Official Mark Setterland said his department is investigating the matter but declined to provide details, including whether the operation is exempt from the city’s noise ordinance.

“That’s the $64,000 question,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.