River Road activists close to resolution on noise health hazard

A report that River Road activists, working with the city through their neighborhood organization, are close to resolving an environmental health hazard. On March 13:

[00:00:11] Jon Belcher (RRCO co-chair): We’re going to end up on good news. This is about Zip-O-Laminators.

[00:00:16] Let me go quickly through the background just in case you’re not aware. Over two years ago, Zip-O-Laminators added a new role to their business, which was making big lam(inated) beams for the Portland Airport. Unfortunately, those beams were longer than their facility.

[00:00:34] So they took their planer outdoors and have been running those lam beams through the planer, which unfortunately, creates a vibration that travels for miles and primarily through our neighborhood because the door that has partially enclosed the laminator, sort of formed as an amplifier, focusing on our neighborhoods.

[00:00:58] After trying to work with Zip-O for some time and not having much success, our previous city councilor, Claire Syrett, and later our current acting city councilor, Lyndsie Leech, worked with the city council and got them to pass an ordinance that expanded the noise ordinance to include those frequencies that Zip-O was pushing into our neighborhood.

[00:01:23] They did that on Jan. 23, and people started sending in their complaints to the city and as a result, they levied a $1,050 fine the maximum on Feb. 22 and March 1. And it appeared that it wasn’t having much success.

[00:01:42] But nonetheless, Dharmika Henshel, who’s been involved most significantly on this, on the fourth of this month, drove by Zip-O and discovered that the planer wasn’t there and the shed that it was surrounded by was gone as well.

[00:02:00] So, don’t know this for certain, but no one has complained about noise or vibration for the past week. We may well have turned the corner on this issue. So, good news. So those of you who called in and complained, your work served a purpose. Thank you very much.

[00:02:19] John Q: The City has shared a memo with Zip-O to ‘outline an agreement to resolve their vibration violation.’ We submitted a public records request for the memo on March 17.