Residents who live near 2 Roswell water towers say sandblasting noise was ‘relentless,’ ‘deafening’

Some neighbors say the noise from the sandblasting work on two water towers in Roswell has been unbearable and lasted for months.

The towers are off Hembree Road. The effort to refurbish the water towers is a $1.6 million project.

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Some neighbors were upset because they were given no notification about how noisy the project would be.

Dan Whitlock has lived in the shadows of the towers for 50 years.

He appreciates the need to do maintenance work, but he said the noise from the sandblasters was both deafening and relentless.

“‘Cause it was just nonstop, day after day after day, five, six, seven days a week,” Whitlock told Channel 2′s Bryan Mims .

Whitlock said the sandblasting started in May and continued through last week.

Whitlock showed Mims a decibel reader on his phone.

The noise hit 91 to 94 decibels, comparable to an air drill.

“Sitting right in the middle of two subdivisions with hundreds of houses around. (It) seems like a poor choice. Whatever they needed to do, they could have found a better way to do it,” Whitlock said.

A woman who lives next door did not want to be identified, but said she had no notice.

She said all the racket spoiled the summer.

“It was to the point where you couldn’t be at your pool or on your porch through the early evening because you couldn’t hear yourself think, much less speak to someone else,” she said.

Fulton County Public Works Director David Clark said neighbors did receive notices about the project and the noise.

“It is unfortunately part of the necessary evil of the projects,” Clark said. “But I bet most of them didn’t quite understand what we were telling them in that notice until they actually experienced it for themselves.”

The two water towers are among 16 in north Fulton County.

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Clark calls them the backbone of the area’s water distribution system.

He said they need to undergo preventative maintenance roughly every 15 years.

Fulton County officials said the worst of the noise is over, but the project will continue through November.

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