Scrap metal noise like a cemetery? Portsmouth Jones Ave. residents blast city official

PORTSMOUTH — Jones Avenue residents criticized the city’s response to multiple concerns they’ve raised about the MAC Metals scrap yard business in their neighborhood.

Residents who spoke in person and via Zoom video conference during Monday night’s City Council meeting, seemed most upset about a recent comment made by Deputy City Attorney Trevor McCourt.

McCourt stated in a memo to City Manager Karen Conard the noise level tests conducted at the MAC Metals scrap metal yard off Jones Avenue “are in line with many properties in the neighborhood, including the South Street Cemetery.”

Jones Avenue residents have complained to city officials about what they see as noise, traffic and safety concerns since Bob MacDonald bought MAC Metals, which was formerly Wentworth Scrap Metals.

The property is located at 246 Jones Ave.

City attorney comments 'ludicrous and demeaning'

Neighborhood resident Pete Evans said comparing the noise from the scrap metal yard to a cemetery is “ludicrous and demeaning.”

“It demeans the credibility of all our complaints, but also the credibility of who we are complaining to,” he said. “I implore the City Council to open your eyes and ears to all the complaints.”

Jones Avenue resident Julie Myers said the neighborhood has evolved over the years as MAC Metals has gotten bigger.

“This is a densely populated street (where) over eight new babies were born here last summer,” she told the council during Monday’s meeting. “No school buses run on this road because of its proximity to all the schools. There are no sidewalks and the children must walk to school.”

Huge dump trucks not welcome in neighborhood

Disabled and elderly residents “often frequent the street … only to be confronted by massive construction vehicles,” Myers said. “This is no place for huge dump trucks to be regularly traveling.”

Jones Avenue resident Tom Kelly also questioned the city’s response to the “significant problems and concerns about the impact of MAC Metals” on the neighborhood.

The city’s response to the varied complaints “appears to reduce what is a multi-impact problem and shrink it down into an issue of just noise,” Kelly said.

City testing efforts 'not genuine'

Kelly called the noise tests the city conducted of MAC Metals “a tiny and inadequate sample during a post-holiday period in the winter for less than an hour of the day.”

“It doesn’t appear to be a genuine effort to address the concerns of the neighborhood,” he said.

Kelly called for “long-term comprehensive sampling” of noise issues coming from the Jones Avenue neighborhood.

“The bottom line is that this is a serious zoning mistake that grandfathered a mom-and-pop retail scrap recycling business to allow an industrial-scale waste handling business that is completely in conflict with the residential character of the neighborhood,” Kelly said.

He suggested that “the most effective and appropriate way to resolve this is by affecting a land swap that provides the owner of MAC Metals with land in an industrial zone and then cleaning up the Jones Avenue site.”

During a presentation to the council, McCourt said he wished he “had chosen my words a little differently when I mentioned the cemetery.”

“What I was trying to convey is that zoning officer Jason Page went to Sagamore Ave., which is a fairly busy street, and took a reading there, just as a comparison,” he said.

City staff meets with owner of MAC Metals

McCourt shared that last week he and other city staff met with MacDonald and the business owner’s attorney, Colby Gamester.

Gamester could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday.

The two sides agreed to use an alternative site for a laydown area for the ongoing Union Street sewer separation project, which MAC Construction – which MacDonald also owns, is conducting for the city, McCourt said.

MacDonald’s Jones Avenue site was used as a laydown area for the project last summer, which McCourt acknowledged “caused a huge increase in the amount of truck traffic going to and from the scrap metal yard.”

MAC Construction will be using a property they also own in Greenland for the laydown area during the upcoming construction season, McCourt said.

But he stated that “due to security concerns,” the Jones Avenue site “will still be used for storage of long sections of pipe and valves and other fittings.”

“This was done for a good period of time last summer, and we did not receive any complaints regarding that use,” McCourt said.

Inherent conflict with scrap metal yard in residential neighborhood

He stated when MAC Metals is “processing scrap metal, that’s inherently going to be noisy from time to time.”

“They do a lot of the scrap metal processing indoors,” he said about the business. “That’s kind of one of the purposes of the building.”

Mayor Deaglan McEachern asked if it was possible to use sound monitoring equipment at the scrap metal site that would be there “for a section of time, like a two-week period.”

McCourt replied the city uses one at Prescott Park but added, “we don’t have one handy that we could go put out there.”

“My preferred solution … when all parties are brought together at the same table is to work toward a solution that works for everybody,” McCourt said.

McCourt cautioned “a scrap metal yard in a residential neighborhood is inherently in conflict.”

“That’s why it’s not zoned for that. That’s why it’s a pre-existing, non-conforming use,” he said.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth response to scrap metal yard noise upsets residents