City asked to spend nearly $700K on wall
On any other playground, the sound of children laughing and yelling would drown out surrounding noise.
But not at Les Enfants, a private preschool in an eastside neighborhood. There, the roar of passing cars and trucks on the nearby Santa Monica Freeway drown out the children as they play in sandboxes and tumble on jumble-gyms.
An exposed section of the freeway runs less than 100 feet from where the playground’s fences end.
Nancy Behravesh, the school’s director, said she has been asking Caltrans and Santa Monica to put up a sound barrier for more than three years. And next week, the Santa Monica City Council may approve a $690,000 contract to build one.
“These are poor Latino residents so (Caltrans officials) did nothing,” Behravesh said. “If this had been Beverly Hills, forget it. It would have been done right away.”
“These are poor Latino residents so (Caltrans officials) did nothing. If this had been Beverly Hills, forget it. It would have been done right away.” — — NANCY BEHRAVESH Les Enfants director
The proposed 1,450-foot-long, 14-foot-high wall would run east along the southern side of the freeway from Cloverfield Boulevard to Stewart Street to tone down the roar of traffic.
In 2000, the city began planning for the sound wall, a city staff report says. City officials sent a sound engineer to the neighborhood and found noise from the freeway was significantly higher than the standards used by Caltrans to rate whether a barrier is required, the report said.
Caltrans and Santa Monica officials were unavailable for comment Friday.
The sound barrier will protect residents of more than a half-dozen apartment complexes from the freeway’s noise. Another school, Edison Elementary, will likely have a decrease in freeway noise affecting its classrooms and playgrounds as well.
“At night we can generally leave our windows open, but when it gets too loud we have to sometimes close them,” said Yoomi Ko, a Kansas Avenue resident. “Hopefully the wall will block some of that noise. And then I could leave my window open.”
“Hopefully the wall will block some of that noise. And then I could leave my window open.” — — YOOMI KO Kansas Avenue resident
Residents of the area had signed a petition almost 14 years ago asking for the sound barrier, but nothing came of it, Behravesh said. Then Les Enfants moved into the neighborhood at 2702 Virginia Ave. and Caltrans began paying attention, she said. Caltrans has made a point to build sound barriers along patches of the state’s freeways where schools are located, Behravesh said.
In 1997, school officials notified Caltrans that they were moving the school into the neighborhood and requested sound walls be erected to protect its students. Caltrans officials began studying the project in 1998, but funding for the project was not approved until 2000. Until the barriers could be built, Caltrans officials installed concrete dividers at the edge of the freeway to prevent cars from accidentally driving off the freeway and into the children’s playground.
Behravesh said she attended meetings held all over Los Angeles to pressure Caltrans officials into action. But just when the state transportation officials were about to approve the project, they passed it along to Santa Monica. The city, however, sent the project back to Caltrans. Finally, the project was returned to Santa Monica, which finally accepted the project, Behravesh said.
By that time, another year had passed, and some parents of the preschool students began withdrawing their children because of the freeway noise, Behravesh said.
“When we started having a couple people withdraw from our program because of it, we started calling City Hall,” she said. “That’s when it seemed to become more serious to them.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 7, 2002. Read the original PDF.