Brent Cheney yelled at the panel of lawmakers not just because he was mad.
"This is how we talk in our back yard to be heard," the East Millcreek resident shouted.He and more than 100 residents living along Salt Lake County's older stretches of freeway told the Transportation and Public Safety appropriations subcommittee Monday that the noise and dirt from increasing traffic has gone on too long.
They want noise walls, and they want them now.
"This committee should be ashamed if you don't do something about it," Cheney bellowed.
In response, lawmakers recommended that Executive Appropriations, which makes the final call on state budgets, consider allocating another $1 million from the general fund to build the high-priced walls along selected sections of I-215.
Since I-215 was completed in the late 1980s, many residents, including Cheney, have complained to lawmakers and the Utah Department of Transportation about lack of noise walls along the older portion of the east-bench freeway. Finishing the southeast leg of I-215 attracted more truck traffic, which brought more noise and dirt. Residents along I-80, I-15 and the west leg of I-215 have since joined in the protest as traffic volumes have grown.
The complaints by residents crammed into a small hearing room in the state Capitol on Monday focused on the health effects of noise pollution and the safety hazards of increased traffic. A Midvale resident cited several instances of trucks and cars leaving the interstate and plowing through fences and into yards and homes. He described a Jeep flying off a semitrailer truck and landing on a resident's tool shed.
But they also complained about the apparent preferential treatment of wealthy Holladay homeowners living near the new stretch of I-215.
"Just past 45th South there are noise walls. Why put them up if nobody lives there?" Cheney said.
But UDOT said noise barriers are along that stretch of freeway because it was completed when federal law required it and federal money paid for it. UDOT's argument against erecting noise walls on existing freeways is that there was no federal program for it and the state would have to pay for it. A 10-foot wall costs about $550,000 per linear foot.
UDOT Executive Director Craig Zwick didn't cry poverty this time. He acknowledged the need then laid the solution in the committee's lap.
"Maybe the panel can appropriate more money and not take away from other needs," which are funded solely by gasoline-tax revenues, he said.
Zwick suggested $1 million in general fund sales-tax revenues could take three or four of the most pressing noise wall problems in the county.
With the state enjoying huge revenue surpluses this year and next, there is money available to fix the problem. Two bills for noise walls in the East Millcreek area have been filed and sources say more could surface this week from legislators representing other areas of the valley.