Excess noise is obnoxious

Dear Hon. Mike Farnworth, Solicitor General for British Columbia:

Summer is finally here, but as the days are getting longer and warmer, noise levels produced by an increasing number of power boats, trucks and motorcycles with inadequate or no mufflers are getting louder.

How incredibly ignorant, and with literally millions of dollars invested in state of the art equipment, including helicopters, why has this obnoxious issue not been addressed?

You don’t need a muffler in each ear to appreciate the natural beauty of our Okanagan Valley.

The bylaws have been in place for years, and they are as relevant today as they were at the time they were adopted, and as citizens we have a right to insist these issues will be addressed.

Allowing this extremely and offensive behaviour to proliferate has also promoted some very aggressive driver attitudes.

Common courtesies and rightof-ways have become a thing of the past, and our highways are not safe to travel as a result of it.

Virtually every day, people are injured or killed in our streets and on our highways.

Federal maritime occupational health and safety regulations consider sounds in a workplace louder than 85 decibels to be hazardous.

The noise levels in our streets and highways are far beyond that.

Those obscene noise levels have also become an issue of invasion of our privacy, denying us our right to enjoy home and property.

It’s hardcore when we are in our homes, spending quality time with friends, or listening to our favourite music or television programs, and our privacy is constantly being interrupted by radically excessive noise produced by motorcycles and motor vehicles that have been retrofitted with after-market flowthrough exhaust pipes for no other reason but to generate more noise.

The RCMP is an integrated municipal, provincial, and federal police organization that has jurisdiction anywhere, anytime, and all the time. The only missing components to make it work, are our politicians, who absolutely refuse to enforce those laws.

Today visitors are telling us that the Okanagan Valley has become the most obnoxious place in the world to visit.

What a legacy, and at a time we are wasting literally millions of dollars promoting tourism.

Please do the right thing and enforce those laws, now. Andy Thomsen

Peachland