Benefits and disadvantages of self-regulation of environmental noise from military training

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2002-05, Vol.111 (5_Supplement), p.2397-2397
• Main Author: Luz, George A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.4778163

In a 1981 Executive decision, the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told the Environmental Protection Agency to end funding of the Office of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC). This decision, coupled with a specific exemption for military equipment contained in the Noise Control Act of 1972, ensured that the military departments would be self-regulating in regard to noise. This self-regulation for noise stands in contrast to the external regulation of other pollutants, such as air and water emissions. Two possible disadvantages of self-regulation are (1) reduced funding for noise management compared with funding for externally regulated pollutants, and (2) lack of an independent and external set of standards for determining acceptable limits on community noise exposure. Three possible benefits are (1) avoiding the costs of mitigating trivial violations of external standards, (2) maintaining a long-standing policy of preventing noise problems through land use planning, and (3) enabling negotiated solutions between installations and their neighboring communities. The paper ends with an examination of a negotiated solution for a community subjected to noise from the detonation of obsolete ammunition.