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Club Motorsports' Army Corps permit appealed in federal court

Noise concerns prompt legal action after Corps ignores expert’s recommendation

( TAMWORTH , NH , October 9, 2006) 
Focus: Tamworth has challenged one of Club Motorsports Inc.’s most important permits: its Department of the Army Permit under Sections 401 and 404 of the Clean Water Act, which was issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in August 2005. Since the Army Corps is a federal agency, the challenge was filed with U.S. District Court in Concord .

The Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, which owns St. Andrews-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church in Tamworth, and more than eighty other abutters, Tamworth residents and landowners, are listed as plaintiffs. Several Silver Lake landowners have joined the appeal. Much of the Silver Lake area has a direct line of sight and hearing to the side of Mt Whittier.

Club Motorsports wants to build a 3.1-mile closed loop racetrack, along with garages, a large paved testing and exhibition “paddock,” a fueling facility, a hotel and other amenities for its members on 251 acres on the north face of Mt. Whittier in Tamworth .

The Army Corps section 401/404 permit is required for all major projects that involve dredging and filling of wetlands. According to federal statute, the Corps must also consider a wide range of other “public interest” factors, and balance them with potential public benefit, when it decides whether or not to grant a permit like this one.

The appeal asserts that Army Corps officials ignored the recommendations of their own sound expert when they issued the permit, which allows noise levels that are significantly above those that the expert recommended.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Focus: Tamworth obtained a copy of the report that the Corps sound expert produced. That report advised the Corps to impose strong limitations on permitted noise from the proposed racetrack. But the Corps failed to adopt those standards, and instead accepted the significantly higher noise limits proposed by the applicant.

“We are very concerned about the noise that CMI’s racetrack will produce,” said Focus: Tamworth spokesman Charles Greenhalgh. “The September Falcon Extreme Motorsports event in Ossipee, which resulted in many complaints from local businesses and residents, illustrates how objectionable the noise from recreational motor vehicles can be without significant noise restrictions.”

The Army Corps received two professional noise studies of the Club Motorsports track’s impact during its consideration of the community impact of the proposed racetrack. One was commissioned by the Tamworth Foundation and one by Club Motorsports. The Tamworth Foundation study, performed by Harris, Miller, Miller and Hanson (HMMH), indicated that the noise from the proposed track would have significant adverse effects on the town; the Club Motorsports study, by Tech Environmental (TE), indicated no major impact.

The Corps hired a third expert, James Cowan of Acentech in Cambridge, MA, to evaluate the two conflicting studies and make recommendations for conditions to be attached to the permit.

Cowan’s report noted that the Traffic Noise Model used by TE was “not appropriate or adequate for modeling racetrack noise,” and that the criteria on which TE evaluated noise impacts were “not intended for use in the analysis of racetrack noise.” He recommended that the Corps set a noise limit of 89dBA or less, measured 50 ft from trackside. This is the limit currently in place at Connecticut ’s Lime Rock Park , a facility that CMI officials have cited as similar to their proposed track. It is also the trackside noise limit that was recommended by HMMH as one of the noise limitations for the original draft of the Tamworth Race Track Ordinance. That limitation standard was challenged by CMI during the development of the ordinance.

Cowan pointed out that even considering the limits in its proposed operation plan, the CMI racetrack will generate noise levels of 100 dBA at 50 ft, more than twice as loud as Lime Rock. He also noted that while the Lime Rock site is relatively flat, the proposed CMI site is located on a steep slope. A granite ledge toward the top of the property will reflect noise back toward the town, the report adds.

“The frequency content and the duration of noise events that could be caused by this facility will sound like no other sound sources in the area. Without appropriate limits, this will change the environment of the Tamworth area,” Cowan’s report concludes.

In April of 2006, Focus: Tamworth sent a letter to Michael Hicks, an Army Corps attorney, requesting that the Corps reconsider its permit decision. “We at least wanted to hear why the Corps chose to ignore the clear recommendations of its own expert,” Greenhalgh said. “But the Corps simply reaffirmed its decision and offered no rationale or explanation for its actions, so we have taken the next step and brought the matter to U.S. District Court.”

The process, he noted, could take more than a year.

Focus: Tamworth is a coalition of local residents who support careful and fair regulations that protect Tamworth ’s economic and natural resources. More information on Focus: Tamworth is available at www.focustamworth.org.

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Note to editors: a copy of the FOIA response, containing James Cowan’s recommendations to the Army Corps, is available from Focus: Tamworth or at http://www.focustamworth.org/Acentech_report_FOIA.pdf . The appeal request filed with U.S. district court is available from Focus: Tamworth .