Review and Comparison of State-Wide Noise Policies across the US

Noise laws and regulations for various legal jurisdictions can be hard to find and even harder to enforce. In the United States, these regulations may exist at the federal, state, county, city or even neighborhood level , sometimes overlapping or contradicting each other and often so loosely or imprecisely worded as to be almost completely unusable for planning or enforcement purposes. Some states have clearly defined and comprehensive noise regulations that are intended to be enforceable state-wide. Other states provide guidance, and in some cases requirements, for noise policies to be developed and adopted at the local level. Yet other states seem to be entirely, and perhaps intentionally, silent on the issue of state-wide noise regulations. In this paper the authors provide a summary review of noise laws at the state level and how they compare on a technical or legal level.