Residents bring noise, light complaints to city

Neighbors south of a growing wood products business brought their complaints about noise, light and trash to the Columbia Falls City Council’s Land Use Committee on July 28.

Both the Western Building Center’s truss plant and SmartLam’s panel board plant have gotten busier lately, WBC manager Doug Shanks told the committee. They’ve added a night shift and may go to a third shift, he said.

The city received numerous complaints from residents in the neighborhood south of 13th Street between South Hilltop Road and Veteran Drive, city planning consultant Eric Mulcahy said. The city mailed out 85 notices about the meeting so the city could take comment.

Four people told the committee about their concerns — noise from loud music, stapling machines, forklift beeping and especially a new chipping machine; bright lights shining into their bedroom windows; and piles of dirt and trash on the three acres south of the new SmartLam building.

Some of those issues have already been addressed, Shanks said. Recent hot weather forced workers to open up south-facing doors, but the company has ordered several expensive 6-foot diameter fans to help ventilate the buildings so the doors could be closed.

There was nothing he could do about the noise of beeping forklifts, for safety reasons, or the staplers, but the chipping machine could be covered with spray-urethane foam to reduce noise. And there was no reason for loud music, Shanks said. He provided his cell phone number so residents could call him about music at night.

Yard lights could be redirected so they didn’t shine into neighborhoods, and plans for a landscape buffer along 13th Street with 12-foot tall conifers was in the works. Shanks put the cost of the buffer at $15,000. The yard was cleaned up once, and more could be done.

“I understand your concerns,” he told residents at the meeting. “Just give us a little bit of time. As soon as we get the OK, we’ll start work on the landscape buffer.”

The truss plant and panel board plant are located on a former timber mill site that is zoned for light industrial. Manufacturing is a permitted use “provided that such uses do not produce objectionable by-products (dirt, noise, glare, heat, odors, smoke, etc.) beyond the lot lines.” A landscape buffer is required within a year after a new activity starts in such an area.

Residential-industrial interfaces are common in Columbia Falls. City manager Susan Nicosia said there was a big rush to get the truss and wood panel plants running with city support during the recent recession, and there were no complaints until the chipper machine started running.

“So the city was caught off guard,” she said.