A gravel hauling truck passes Melvin Jennings house on Hano Road at 2:48 a.m. June 3, 2024. (Lue Palmer for Louisiana Illuminator)
The noise that shook Melvin Jennings awake felt like thunder.
It was the middle of the night in April 2019, on a hushed, nearly 5-mile road that runs between St. Helena and Tangipahoa parishes. The window panes in his bedroom were rattling, he said, as a procession of gravel trucks roared by one after the other, yards from his home as his wife Patricia, who suffers from dementia, was startled awake in her medical bed.
“Its like torture. Especially when you’re in your own house,” said Jennings. “All through the night … It scares you.”
Five years later, Jennings, a 77-year-old Vietnam War veteran who says his family has lived in St. Helena Parish for nearly 100 years, can’t recall the last time he and his wife slept through the night.
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This refrain is not unusual on Hano Road, a small community about an hour northwest of New Orleans. The road stretches between Louisiana highways 16 and 40, which both provide quick access to Interstate 55. The convenient access to a gravel pit and a landfill has created a nightly situation that residents have labeled “abuse.”
Between 1 a.m. and 5 p.m. most days, gravel haulers or garbage trucks can be heard rumbling up and down the narrow road on their way to pick up or drop off their loads. The gravel pit sits beside a mountainous and startlingly green landfill that looms over the flat landscape. The landfill is owned by Tangipahoa parish and marks the dividing line between it and St. Helena.
Melvin Jennings, a 77-year-old Vietnam War veteran, says he can’t recall the last time he and his wife slept through the night because of the frequency of large trucks passing in front of their home in St. Helena Parish. (Minh Ha for Louisiana Illuminator)
Arcosa Aggregates, a sand and gravel provider with 10 sites across south Louisiana, owns the pit that went into operation on Hano Road in July 2018, according to the company.
Nearly 100 residents of Hano Road have signed a petition sent to local officials pushing for more regulation. While they have been unsatisfied with the response to their complaints, their grievances come at a time of increased demand for federal action on noise pollution.
“Noise has been labeled an annoyance. It’s so far beyond just an annoyance,” said Jamie Banks, an environmental scientist and founder of Quiet Communities, a nonprofit that is suing the Environmental Protection Agency alleging a lack of enforcement of the Noise Control Act, a law that has been on the books since 1972.
Quiet Communities points to medical research that has confirmed chronic exposure leads to higher rates of cardiovascular, metabolic and psychological diseases.
The World Health Organization has long listed environmental noise as a public health concern, contributing to “healthy life years … lost from traffic-related noise.
A 2023 study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital found that exposure to noise pollution is associated with major cardiovascular events and inflammation of arteries.
Harvard University’s School of Public Health has also produced studies on the effects of noise pollution.
Despite this and additional research that details the health threat excessive noise poses, “It’s been a forgotten subject,” Banks said.
Forgotten because the EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control has been operationally defunct since it was defunded nearly 40 years ago. In the four decades since, the agency has failed to enforce a central piece of legislation to protect public health, the Quiet Communities suit argues. People across the country are being exposed to dangerous levels of chronic noise, the group says.
The health effects of noise exposure have been known for decades, said Peter James, associate professor at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, noting the link to increased levels of cardiovascular disease, dementia and mental health issues. Emerging research shows excessive noise exposure can even reduce a person’s lifespan, he said.
“Even when you’re sleeping, you’re having this subconscious response to the noise,” James said, noting that even inaudible vibration can cause inflammation associated with heart attacks and stroke.
Asked about the neighbors’ long-standing noise concerns, an Arcosa Aggregates spokesman offered a brief statement in response.
“We take the concerns outlined seriously. We will review our operations and work to address these issues,” Jeff Eller said in a statement.
A gravel hauling truck passes homes on Hano Road in St. Helena Parish. (Minh Ha for Louisiana Illuminator)
In the absence of the EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control, responsibility for regulating loud sound lies with local and state governments. But there is no noise ordinance in place for Tangipahoa Parish, where the landfill and state officials have offered no insight when asked if and how they intend to enforce existing Louisiana laws.
In an interview, Tangipahoa Parish President Robby Miller pointed to a need for business to continue as usual.
“The health and well-being of our citizens is always a concern. I’m sorry that it’s bothering them,” Miller said. “Maybe a noise machine in their house would be helpful, like babies use to sleep to block out all the noise.”
“The gravel pit is a commercial enterprise,” the parish president continued. “They have rights and protections. Federal rights and protections and state rights and protections.”
St. Helena Parish President Ryan Byrd confirmed he is aware of the noise in the neighborhood but said he’s unsure of what can be done.
“As far as the schedule, we can’t control their schedule. … It depends on how far they’ve got to go to drop loads. I guess that’s why they start so early,” Byrd said.
“Anything I can try to do to help, I will,” he added.
Without a national strategy, and in the absence of state and local enforcement, communities are left to struggle with persistent noise issues — and the health problems they create — on their own, Banks said.
‘People out here are being abused’
It was the middle of the night in mid-October 2021 when Banks received and recorded a call at her home in Boston.
“It’s 3 a.m. Central time and we’re being serenaded by the gravel trucks. You know, people out here are being abused,” Dave Williams, a retiree, said from his home on Hano Road. “There’s people down there suffering, right now … we ain’t got nobody to help us.”
When Williams called Banks, two years after he and his wife Liz were first awoken by noise in the middle of the night, he had been suffering from anxiety and vomiting, Williams said in an interview. Liz Williams said the noise affected her fibromyalgia, despite using earplugs and sleep medication.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) is responsible for regulating noise pollution at the state level under two state laws (Read them here and here). The agency also is required to implement a “comprehensive program for the control and abatement of environmental noise pollution,” consistent with the federal Noise Control Act of 1972.
Liz Williams, pictured with her husband Dave inside their home on Hano Road, says the constant stream of heavy trucks has caused her health issues to become worse. (Minh Ha for Louisiana Illuminator)
The Williamses first sent a letter and their petition to LDEQ in April 2021. When they did not receive a reply, they contacted the department via email the following spring. To date, they have not yet received a reply regarding their concerns.
LDEQ did not respond to the Illuminator’s questions about the Williamses’ request for an investigation into issues on Hano Road. In response to general questions about the state’s role in noise control enforcement, the department’s communications office provided a one-sentence reply: “LDEQ has no authority to regulate noise pollution in regards to the Arcosa Aggregates facility.”
The department has not responded to follow-up questions regarding the two state laws that spell out their responsibility to regulate noise pollution.
The petition from Hano Road residents, which neighbor Melvin Jennings collected in 2021, includes 96 signatures. Jennings and the Williamses submitted the petition to the St. Helena Police Jury and the Tangipahoa Parish Council.
State law allows local governments to create additional noise pollution ordinances if they want to enforce standards stricter than the federal government’s.
“The problem is that with the parish, us being rural, we don’t have a noise ordinance. And if we had one, how do you regulate it, you know? How would you regulate the noise, is my question,” said Louis Nick Joseph, who represents the district that includes Hano Road on the Tangipahoa Parish Council.
The Tangipahoa Parish Council tried to create another route for trucks to and from the gravel pit and landfill, Joseph said. It called for acquiring private property that would allow Arcosa to avoid driving down Hano Road, but the property owner was asking for more money than the council was authorized to spend, according to the councilman.
Arcosa did agree to end its practice of trucks idling in the street and move them onto private property when waiting to reload, Joseph said.
‘I want to live in peace again’
In a community where residents say they suffer from high rates of cancer and other illnesses, some on Hano Road worry the nightly noise might be causing more severe health outcomes.
“I just think about the people that’s died out here, and whether it’s related to this or not, to have to spend the last few years of their life getting beat the hell out of every morning … at two in the morning,” Dave Williams said.
Melvin Jennings, who lives on the St. Helena side of Hano Road, where the houses and trailer homes of Black residents sit closer to the the street, says the nightly noise has an effect on his mental health and on his wife’s dementia.
“It’s bad on my PTSD,” the Vietnam War veteran said, recalling how he often jumps up in fear and then has to calm his wife.
“I don’t have nobody helping through the night. It’s on me …” Jennings said. “I just have to do it without the rest. And then I can’t hardly sleep in the daytime. That’s what’s got me messed up.”
The entrance to the Arcosa Aggregates gravel pit in St. Helena Parish is directly beside the Tangipahoa Parish landfill, on April 6th, 2024. (Minh Ha for Louisiana Illuminator)
On the south end of Hano Road, locals get a reprieve from the noise on Sundays, Williams said. But on the north end, populated mostly by Black families, residents say the noise continues almost constantly.
“Years ago, when someone would die around here the family would be going through mourning, they would put up signs: ‘Quiet Zone.’” he said. “They don’t do that no more. They gave the trucks this road, this neighborhood.”
James, the UC Davis environmental health expert, said that while the correlation between chronic noise exposure and increased risk of cardiovascular and other diseases is clear, its effect on mental health shouldn’t be underestimated.
“Let’s not forget about mental health and sleep. Those are not soft health outcomes. Those are extremely important. Quality of life is extremely important. Not to mention the downstream consequences… sleep is strongly linked to cancer.” James said, emphasizing a need for more wide-scale data collection.
“We have a nationwide system for air monitors that are set to a certain standard. … We don’t have that for noise at all,” James said.
Arcosa Aggregates declined to offer further details on its review of operations on Hano Road and whether its schedule could be adjusted to reduce the nightly noise.
“We continually monitor our operations and, at this time, have made no changes at this location,” Eller, its spokesman, said last month.
In the meantime, residents on Hano Road still wait for solutions they fear won’t come soon enough.
“We want to live in peace again, and we’re getting older,” Jennings said. “We need more peace than we’re getting.”
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This project was made possible by Kozik Environmental Justice Reporting Grants funded by the National Press Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute.