After nearly a year of deliberation, Whistler council is closing in on adopting a new noise bylaw that would increase the total number of hours construction noise is allowed in the resort.
At the May 24 council meeting, a bylaw recommendation was brought forward by staff that would change the hours that loud construction is permitted.
The hours proposed by staff would have made it so that loud construction would only be allowed from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Monday to Friday, with the weekends and statutory holidays starting an hour later. Currently, loud construction is allowed from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.
This change would have added about 12 extra building hours for the year, and was an attempt at bridging the gap between the wants of the construction industry and residents.
Councillor John Grills brought forward an amendment to have Saturday construction start times brought in line with Monday to Friday start times so that Saturdays would also begin at 7:30 a.m. The amendment passed, with Coun. Cathy Jewett opposed.
Coun. Duane Jackson recused himself from the discussion due to being a Sea to Sky Home Builders Association director.
“We’re increasing the hours even more for construction, so what we’re doing is that we are not increasing the peace and quiet on weekends and holidays. We’re actually decreasing it. So I will be voting against this,” said Jewett.
But it is a challenge to get crews on site and projects completed, and the costs associated with building are extreme, Grills noted.
“So, personally, I’d rather have work get done and save the evenings more than in the mornings, but I think Saturday is still a pretty strong construction day, and the staff has recommended that construction starts later on Sundays, which we went with,” he said.
“The construction industry is a really big part of our community right now and has been for a long time, and they’ve asked for some additional time to get the projects done. I don’t know if they’ll use those hours all the time, but they’re available to them.”
The bylaw would amount to 4,472 construction hours per year, adding 65 more construction hours over the current allowable amount.
Initially, changes to the noise bylaw were brought forward to council in July 2021 and were to be adopted at the Sept. 7, 2021 meeting. But council felt there should be more input from the construction industry and the community before the bylaw was approved.
So the bylaw was sent back to staff for more community consultation. In October, a community survey was initiated, and 387 people responded with their preferred times. A majority of respondents in the survey wanted to limit the hours of construction, especially on weekends and statutory holidays.
Council was worried that such a restriction on construction times would hinder the municipality’s available building hours (a concern shared by the Sea to Sky chapter of the Canadian Home Builders Association), which in turn would hamper efforts to address the housing crisis by building more housing.
The new noise bylaw will also add new definitions for noise and noise-related construction and industrial activities, and remove the sections in the bylaw on watercraft operation on lakes as navigation, which can only be regulated by the federal government.
There are also a variety of exemptions for noise in the bylaw, including restaurant noise, sounds made by children playing, garbage trucks, trucks loading and unloading goods, noise from public worship services and the use of parks or other areas for permitted special events.
The bylaw will be brought back at a future council meeting for further deliberation.
