Citizens rise up against business' noise

Trucking company the target of the ire of residents of nearby homes

The sounds of a bustling produce-trucking business have a group of neighbors awake at night and upset during the day.

RTK Producers, which transports organic matter such as potato residues, has been operating for about three years at the corner of Beacon Road and Grape Drive, on the outskirts of Moses Lake.

Ever since the business began, neighbors have had to deal with the noise of their trucks, as well as the odors coming from their load. Recently, their protests have become, if not as loud, as persistent as the sound of the trucks' roaring engines.

Gary Trautman, the owner of the Chief Moses Trailer Park said the effect of the noise on his tenants is hard to quantify, but it is easy to imagine.

"We have several older people living at the trailer court," he said. "The noise interrupts their sleep patterns."

Mike Willey is one of those senior citizens living at the trailer park and he agrees.

"The noise wakes me up at night," Willey said. "In the winter they leave the trucks idling half the night." RTK did not return the Herald's messages.

What irks the neighbors the most is not just the noise or the fumes, which causes them to spend hundreds of dollars in soundproof material and endless hours indoors. Smell is an issue, too.

Since the trucks carry around organic matter such as potato waste, nasty odors emanate from the trucks sometimes. Same is true when the company washes the trucks out, leaving residue on the ground.

Willey said that nothing has been done by most any sort of authority. Neither RTK has answered the citations nor the county's planning department agents have strongly enforced them, he said.

"A (Grant County) sheriff deputy told me the were going to issue citations, and they never even sent a car out (to RTK)," Willey said. "They are never going to do anything."

Scott Clark, director of the county's planning department, said that the current guidelines require that RTK has the proper permit to operate, and that according to an update from the sheriff's office's code enforcement officer, at least two fines have been issued to the produce trucking business.

"They have not complied with the permit process," Clark said, adding that that was the reason behind the fines.

On Sept. 1, at 2 p.m., the neighbors are scheduled to meet with members of the prosecuting attorney's office, and explain once again the serious effects of having RTK across the street or right next door.

Among the suggested solutions are the installation of a sound barrier of sorts that might help keep the noise somewhat muffled and a storm drain where the water used to wash the trucks can flow into.

The neighbors insist they are not asking for RTK to leave.

"We believe in free enterprise," Kathleen Crozier, a next-door neighbor of RTK. "That is the American way. But we also believe in keeping this a residential area."

The neighborhood, Crozier said, used to be zoned under Residential 2/light industrial codes. Now, she said, without notification the neighbors are living in an area coded as Industrial Zone.

"There are 25 homes and three businesses, and it's coded as an industrial zone," she said.

Grant County Commissioner Tim Snead disagreed, saying he did not think that was entirely accurate. He did say that RTK had bypassed the process to an extent, and that the county was working to bring them into compliance, "as we speak."

An example of bypassing processes, Crozier said, is the lack of an impact hearing on RTK, to determine the effect of such a business on the neighborhood. A nearby storage company, which she said has little or no negative effect on the residents, did have to attend a hearing.

Regardless of whose version of the zone changes took place, neighbors of the Grape/Beacon area feel helpless when faced with the nuisances. Crozier said they have been waiting for a response for more than two years.

Not only has the response from area authorities less than what they expected, they said the trucking company has been "uncaring" to the residents' concerns.

"When they first moved in, they told us 'this is our business,'" said Crozier, who has lived in the neighborhood for most of her life. "They were very obnoxious."##2OhmR"#e*noiseMain_Server##2SORTFAe2AUDT