Residents who say they can’t open their windows or relax in their back yards due to noise from the nearby curling rink are asking for the Town to put an end to it.
Three Black Diamond residents who live near the rink approached Town council at its regular meeting on April 13 over the level of noise emitting from a condenser fan on the rink’s roof.
Jane Toews said residents approached the Oilfields Curling Club about the noise twice during the last year and a half, yet nothing has changed.
“It’s been going on far too long,” she said. “It was a changeover from a system of three cooling fans to four cooling fans a couple of years ago. We tried to tolerate it, but we can’t anymore.”
Toews, who’s lived in her home since 1981, said neither she nor her nearby neighbours can enjoy the outdoors in the area while the fan is operating during the curling season.
“It’s a period of time when the club is open that they have that on and it’s pretty much continuous with short little breaks of five or 10 minutes,” she said. “It makes it unpleasant to go outside and you don’t want to open the windows. Just going outside and hearing that roaring, it’s like a jet engine.”
Toews said a decibel reading in her backyard measured higher than 70, and that the noise has been causing her stress.
“I thought it was a really unfortunate situation that happened that they put in a much bigger cooling system without the regard that it was going to create so much noise and what the impact of that was going to be,” she said. “I don’t want to leave the impression that I’m against the curling rink. I regard it as an asset to the community, but we are really impacted by the noise. It’s really intolerable.”
A representative from the Oilfields Curling Club was unavailable for comment by press time.
Black Diamond town council has agreed to establish a group to look into the residents’ concerns consisting of parks and recreation manager Les Quinton, residents, representatives from the curling club and coun. Jim Deacon.
“Something needs to be done there,” mayor Sharlene Brown told council. “It gives us some time to work on the issue and have it addressed (before the curling season starts again). Right now we don’t have any noise bylaw in place that would address this particular issue at this point.”
Resident Wayne Klopp said the solution could be a simple fix like adjusting the fan pitch or speed.
“The Seaman arena has the same unit and those don’t bother us,” he said. “I think it’s just the location. The noise refracts off the metal. You can hear it at night with the windows closed.”
Klopp added he’s seen children on the roof when ladders have been left in the area, and was told by council that they will address the safety issue.
Deacon told the Western Wheel on Monday that Quinton has been looking into ways to mitigate the noise issue.
“It’s pretty tough for the curling rink to repair it right now because they don’t have the cash flow to do it,” he said. “But if there is something that can be done cheaply I think the Town will probably handle it. We will do it in consultation with the people that have complained about the noise and the curling rink.”
Deacon said the Scott Seaman Sports Rink is cooled using the same style of condenser fan as the curling rink, yet it’s located at ground level and there is very little noise coming from it.
He added that Quinton took a decibel reading with his phone recently and the readings ranged from 55 decibels below the curling rink’s condenser fan to 65 decibels in one of the residents’ back yards.
