Community acceptance of new noise sources located in quiet rural environments

Residents of rural or semi-rural communities often assume the quiet environment they live in will never change. When a new noise source is introduced into a community that has never been exposed to continuous sound from highways or industry, there are often noise complaints even when the new source results in no measurable increase in the ambient A-weighted sound. The paper provides examples of resident's complaints from industrial facilities located more than 1.5 km from the residential receptors. The author presents data speculating detectability, due to the character of the industrial sound, is just as important to community acceptance as the facility's sound level.