Saint John council has approved J.D. Irving, Limited’s proposed logistics park on the city’s west side — along with “unprecedented” noise monitoring conditions for the site.
The company plans to develop an intermodal terminal at its Dever Road railyard to transfer containers from rail cars to tractor-trailers, and eventually an auto terminal to receive new vehicle shipments by rail.
But the project, dubbed the Lancaster Logistics Park, faced opposition during a public hearing in June as residents and councillors raised concerns about ongoing noise impacts.
City staff came back to council Monday night with several new conditions to ensure noise levels remain within two decibels of current levels going forward.
According to a staff report, JDI asserted that it is “not practical and cost-prohibitive” to conduct ongoing or annual monitoring for its rail operations.
Phil Ouellette, director of growth, planning and community services, said rather than ongoing monitoring, the city will be able to do its own sound assessments if it is believed noise levels are more than two decibels above current levels.
“The staff recommendation is unprecedented for Saint John and, from our analysis, there is not any other community we could find that has adopted similar conditions for recent developments of this nature,” said Ouellette.
The city will be able to complete up to four sound assessments every 10 years, said Ouellette, who noted that the facility would have to be shut down for 24 hours each time to gather baseline sound data.
It will be up to the company to mitigate noise impacts if it is found that levels have increased by more than two decibels due to terminal operations. If JDI does not follow the conditions, the site could be shut down.
JDI has agreed to pay the city $50,000 to help offset the costs of future noise monitoring at the site.
Ouellette said JDI sought to have the city-initiated noise monitoring end after 10 years as long as no fluctuations were noted, raising concerns that having the condition continue forever would be “too disruptive,” but he said city staff were not prepared to endorse that change.
The conditions approved Monday night are in addition to several others that were proposed, such as a treed berm and a sound wall to mitigate noise impacts of the development.
While most voted to approve the project based on the new conditions, Joanna Killen and Paula Radwan said they were still not comfortable with it.
At issue for both councillors was JDI’s claim that ongoing sound monitoring at the site would be “cost-prohibitive.”
“There are some things that are not cost-prohibitive to me,” said Radwan. “It’s not cost-prohibitive for citizens to deal with increased noise, it’s not very cost-prohibitive to be dealing with ongoing concerns about noise when it’s going to be very costly to resolve them.”
Ouellette said the broader issue of noise associated is something that city staff are working on. He proposed a thorough review of the city’s noise bylaw as part of its workplan for 2022.
City staff are also working with provincial and federal counterparts to modernize legislation that governs railways, said Ouellette.
Follow
