Ready or Not (for Many, It’s ‘Not’), New Noise Code Is Taking Effect

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has called it “the first comprehensive overhaul of the New York City Noise Code in 30 years.” But for all the fanfare, it is sneaking up quietly, on a city largely unprepared.

Skip to next paragraph Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Meters like this one will measure decibel levels to aid enforcement.

At 12:01 a.m. tomorrow, three years and three weeks after it was first proposed by Mr. Bloomberg to provide “well-deserved peace and quiet” in the nation’s largest and probably its noisiest city, a new noise code takes effect. The city will impose limits on everything from the number of minutes a barking dog can disrupt the neighborhood to the highest allowable decibel level of nightclub music as it throbs into neighboring homes.

Yet those most likely to be affected, like nightclub owners, say they have not really prepared for it, and the New York City Police Department has only about 80 meters to monitor noise — a number that seems low in a city of more than eight million people prone to making a racket. The Department of Environmental Protection has 26 and said it is ordering more.

When the code goes into effect, contractors must produce “noise mitigation plans,” and post them at their job sites, informing the public how they intend to minimize the sounds of exploding rock, yammering jackhammers and other outbursts. Garbage trucks must stay at least 50 feet away from residential buildings between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.; ice cream trucks must turn off their cheery jingles when parked at the curb; and poorly muffled motorcycles and trucks will be barred.

The new noise code was signed by the mayor at the end of 2005 with the provision that it take effect 18 months later. Emily Lloyd, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, which will have chief enforcement responsibility, said the time was necessary to work out details with the real estate industry, nightclubs, construction unions and others whose livelihood will be affected.

“Individual businesses might be surprised, but industry groups will not,” Ms. Lloyd said. She said the public, including those inclined to apply the new noise standards to the rock club next door, or to the work crew down the block, “will learn from word of mouth, and if they call 311, they will certainly find out.”

Still, even some of those who have followed the long evolution of the new noise law say it will catch the city off guard.

“I haven’t gotten a sense in the last year that a lot of our members have been installing soundproofing,” said Robert S. Bookman, a lawyer for the New York Nightlife Association, which represents nightclub owners. The law will reduce the allowable noise level that is emitted into neighboring buildings and outside on the street, and is to be enforced by the police and agents on Ms. Lloyd’s staff armed with electronic noise meters.

“Over the years, very few people have gotten violations,” Mr. Bookman said. “Now, I guess, they are taking a wait-and-see attitude.”

Since handheld electronic noise meters are a crucial enforcement tool, it was unclear whether the city would have enough to respond if there is a surge of complaints. Peter Martin, a spokesman for the police, said it had about 80 of the meters, enough for one in each of the 76 police precincts, with more distributed in the most densely populated Manhattan precincts. The Department of Environmental Protection has assigned 45 people as full-time noise code enforcers, Ms. Lloyd said.

Christopher O. Ward, who headed the Department of Environmental Protection in June 2004, when he joined Mr. Bloomberg in proposing a draft version of the new limits, has since become the managing director of the General Contractors Association of New York, a trade group whose members are affected. He said they were aware that enforcement was imminent, and worried about the outcome.

“This won’t eliminate construction noise, and what people have to work through is how far the contractor has to go,” he said. “Calling 311 has become a form of psychiatry in New York,” he said, adding that the new noise limits would lead to “more complaints.”

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