By Julie Shapiro
With the new city noise codes in hand, the Department of Environmental Protection is taking a harder line against 60 Hudson St., the telecom hotel that houses sensitive electronic equipment.
Residents launch frequent complaints against 60 Hudson St. for the noisy equipment used to cool and maintain the electronics and for the diesel fuel stored above the ground floor of the building.
Now the residents, who formed the organization Neighbors Against Noise, have the ear of Geraldine Kelpin, head of the D.E.P.’s air and noise unit. Kelpin has met with the group twice this spring and is using their tips to drive her investigations.
In March, a resident called the D.E.P. to report that a generator facing Worth St. was smoking and making too much noise. The D.E.P. had inspectors in the area, so they swung by the building and verified the complaint, Kelpin said.
After she informed the owners of the generator that they were not in compliance with D.E.P. codes, the owners fixed the equipment, she said.
Those generators had been bothering Bruce Ehrmann, a leader of Neighbors Against Noise, for years.
“I have high hopes that after 12 to 14 years of struggle…now that D.E.P. has the same interest [as N.A.N.] in enforcing the new law,” Ehrmann said. “They’ve shown positive steps.”
Residents often complain that the building owner has not been responsive to their concerns.
Brian Maddox, a spokesperson for GVA Williams, a co-owner of the building, said this week that the owners want to hear from residents if they think there is a potentially serious situation. The building has a team of engineers on call to deal with any noise or smoke issues that arise when equipment malfunctions, Maddox said. The building owners also do their own inspections, independent of the D.E.P., to head off problems, he said.
“You can either be vigilant or you can wait for someone to say, ‘Hey, you have a problem,” Maddox said.
All of the building’s tenants are currently in compliance, he added.
In addition to meeting with the residents, Kelpin is doing an inventory of the building, seeing what equipment is where and who owns it.
Kelpin hopes to return to 60 Hudson St. every few weeks to continue inspections. The D.E.P. measures the noise of the machinery and compares it to ambient noise, or general noise level without the machinery. To do the tests, Kelpin has to coordinate with the equipment owners, because they often want their own engineer to be present to turn the machines on and off. That coordination takes time, she said.
When the D.E.P. gets complaints about noise from residents, they usually set up appointments to take readings from the residents’ apartments.
If the inspectors find equipment that is too noisy, they notify the Environmental Control Board, which can issue violations.
Kelpin emphasized that the D.E.P.’s inspections are complaint-driven.
“If we don’t hear from somebody, we assume the problem has been solved,” she said. Calls to 311 on building noise get routed to the D.E.P.
Before the new noise code, which went into effect last summer, the D.E.P. had to monitor the noise produced by every piece of equipment separately. But at 60 Hudson St., a building that seems to sprout generators and air circulators from every available surface, the individual pieces of equipment were not the problem — the conglomeration was.
The new noise code allows the D.E.P. to consider the total impact of a cluster of equipment owned by a single company. If the cluster of units makes too much noise — even if each individual unit is compliant — the D.E.P. can now issue a violation.
At an April meeting with residents, Kelpin had good news: Most of the cooling units are in clusters, all belonging to the same owner, which fits right into the new code.
Kelpin sees 60 Hudson St. as a way of testing the new noise code and seeing how the section addressing cumulative noise levels works.
“It’s given us a couple new enforcement tools,” she said.
Deborah Allen, a leader of Neighbors Against Noise, sees the D.E.P.’s action in March as a good first step.
“We had felt it was hopeless,” she said. “But that was good news.”
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
