The Environmental Impact Of Drag Racing – For 60 years, this rink has been Portland’s most noisy park Why aren’t city officials doing anything about it?
When Martin Knowles moved to Kenton in the spring of 2010, he knew that Portland International Raceway was only a half mile from his home.
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Before he and his wife bought their home, Knowles, 42, tried to figure out how strong the track could be. “On their website,” he says, “they state that most days it is not audible at any point in the neighborhood.”
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And for the first month, as the couple settled into their new home, they didn’t hear a sound.
SCREAMING TIRES: A drag racer performs a “burnout” to warm up his tires in the weekly Wednesday night drag races last week. (Chris Nesseth)
It was Knowles’ welcome to PIR, the closest major road race track to a residential neighborhood in the United States. Everything from Indy cars to motocross bikes and historic sports cars race on the flat track in front of grandstands that hold up to 40,000 spectators.
Depending on the size of the internal combustion engines operating that day, Kenton residents described the noise as a high-pitched wail, like a swarm of wasps, or the sound of an engine coming and going, as ‘and a neighbor with a gas-powered leaf blower.
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“I can’t get away,” says Nini Liedman, 34, who has lived in Kenton for eight years. Liedman says the noise from the track started to affect his mental health. “I can hear it through headphones, I can hear it through earplugs, I can hear it when I close all my windows,” he says.
In fact, according to residents’ readings of a noise control monitor placed in the neighborhood six years ago, the track exceeded the legal limit for noise in the neighborhood – 65 decibels – hundreds of times. “I reported violations at least once a week all summer long for six years,” Knowles says.
Such violations were reported to the city of Portland, which, according to more than a dozen Kenton residents, did little or nothing about the rule violation.
Some think the reason is simple. That’s because the owner of the track is the city of Portland.
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That’s right—Portland is one of only two local governments in the United States that owns racetracks. The other is Monterey County, California, whose parks department owns the Laguna Seca Raceway near Salinas.
Opened in 1961 on the remains of the flooded streets of Vanport, PIR has hosted races in North Portland, on the edge of the Kenton neighborhood, for 60 years this summer.
“I’ve always felt the city would be tougher on PIR if you didn’t own it,” says Kenton Neighborhood Association board member Ryan Pittel.
EXHAUSTED: Plumes of exhaust from dragsters burning leaded gasoline are often blown by winds from the north or northwest during the summer months, spreading fumes from the track throughout the Kenton neighborhood. (Chris Nesseth)
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Runners often describe PIR as unique. I am not referring to the track itself, which is a fairly typical 2 mile loop. It’s the place.
Mark Scholz, a local racing enthusiast who regularly drives his Maserati Gran Turismo to the track from his home in Southwest Portland, says PIR is the only track where you can go racing for the day and get home in time for dinner “It’s an ability to indulge your passion in motorsports without being far from the city limits,” he says.
In a recent promotion from the Sports Car Club of America, PIR is described as “a stone’s throw from downtown Portland.” While that might be an exaggeration, it’s a five-minute walk across the Columbia Slough from Kenton, a neighborhood of more than 8,000 that has historically been home to low-income and diverse populations.
PIR hosts events almost every day of the summer. And many of them are a trial for Knowles and his neighbors, who say that the noise of the track pollutes their lives and makes them dread the summer.
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For many people who live near the track, the problem is not just the volume. It is his growing belief that the city will not enforce its own noise ordinance in PIR, breaking a promise it made to the Kenton community more than 30 years ago.
EARS BURNING: Kenton resident Nini Liedman documents the neighborhood noise level in her backyard with her own sound level meter. (Chris Nesseth)
In 1976, Portland passed its first noise ordinance. Immediately, this meant that the city was violating its own law because races in PIR routinely exceeded the new noise limit.
A decade of conflict between the city and North Portland neighborhood associations followed until an unfortunate agreement was finally reached in 1989: the neighborhood associations continued to fight the track over noise issues, and the track, in turn, would limit its strongest races to four events. one year, put a portion of ticket sales into a trust fund for neighborhood associations, and agree to honor the city’s noise levels the rest of the time.
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The noise code, then and now, is clear: 65 decibels is the maximum noise allowed for residential areas. According to the agreement, limiting the noise of the cars on the track to 105 decibels would be equivalent to no more than 65 decibels in the nearest house.
PIR, run by Portland Parks & Recreation, states that regular track activity does not exceed 65 decibels. For the past 11 years, Knowles has documented the opposite.
For a long time, it was just the words of the neighbors against the city. Finally, in 2015, responding to pressure from the neighborhood association and the city’s noise control program, the parks office installed a sound monitor in Kenton. “We pushed for a decade to get a meter before it was put in place,” says Paul van Orden, Portland’s noise control officer.
LISTEN IN: The Kenton noise monitor installed on North Tyndall Street by Portland Parks & Recreation allows Kenton residents to monitor noise violations online, but has not changed noise enforcement at PIR. (Chris Nesseth)
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Knowles and his neighbors showed WW screenshots of the meter indicating violations of the city’s noise limits 18 times this summer alone. When Knowles sent those images to the city, he says, it was ignored.
Most of the two dozen Kenton residents interviewed by WW told a similar story: They complained by phone or email, sometimes repeatedly, and never heard back or, if they did, said they it wasn’t really a violation.
Portland Parks & Recreation received 61 noise complaints at PIR during the 2018 and 2019 race seasons, of which six were found to be valid, says parks spokesman Mark Ross.
He maintains that few of the neighborhood nuisances were caused by the track. “Nearly all temporary noise ‘spikes’ were caused NOT by PIR racing,” writes Ross, “but by other sources such as trucks on nearby roads or boulevards, dogs, lawnmowers, crow calls, children they play, or train horns”.
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But, it turns out, the city didn’t need screenshots of Knowles, or even its own meter, to tell how loud it was. Seven years before installing the neighborhood noise monitor, the city commissioned a study of noise pollution in North Portland.
What this study found was that the noise from the track probably exceeded 65 decibels in a significant part of Kenton. The city’s model indicated that noise levels at the Kenton waterfront during a typical run could even reach 75 decibels. The report concluded that track noise may need to be reduced to comply with the noise code and maintain healthy noise levels.
The report was never formally released, although WW obtained a draft copy from the Kenton Neighborhood Association. When asked why the report had not been released, the city’s noise office said it was inconclusive and needed more work to link the noise from the track to the sounds heard in Kenton, but that the economic crash of 2008 derailed further study. “The noise office has requested over the years that additional funding be provided to assess and mitigate noise levels, which will require a substantial investment from the City Council,” wrote noise officer Kareen Perkins.
The city’s 2008 noise analysis showed that a wide swath of north Kenton — shown in red — would be exposed to noise levels above city standards during normal runway operations even at the current “reduced” limit of 103 decibels.
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Supporters of the race track point out that Kenton is already one of the city’s most noise-polluted neighborhoods — falling as it is near the flight paths for Portland International Airport, next to Interstate 5, and alongside a well-used railway line – and agreed report.
But for the noise officer van Orden, this does not diminish the scale of the roar of the PIR: “As an environmental scientist, I felt that there was a clear problem in the track that we can really face because it is a facility of the city.
On a recent Wednesday evening at the track, a sprawling crowd of spectators drinks cans of Coors Light as a line of cars ranging from street-legal family sedans to custom dragsters await their turn to race on the track.
John Waleske, 72, watches as two cars approach the starting line. The drivers fired their engines and