Noise From Salem Power Plant Riles Area Residents

SALEM, MA -- Amy Berenson of Marblehead probably would have called to complain about the boise coming across the water from Salem Wednesday night. The only problem was that the noise from the Footprint Power Station in Salem was so loud it was interfering with her phone calls.

"I cannot imagine what the local residents are doing," Berenson said in an email to Salem Patch at 7:30 pm Wednesday night. By 11 pm that night, Joanne Kennedy of the Historic Derby Street Neighborhood Association was so fed up with the noise that she posted a video of the sound on the Facebook page of U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.).

"This is what we get from Footprint at 11pm on a Wednesday night when they are not even running! What we will we face when the plant goes live?" Kennedy said in her Facebook post.

The plant is being converted from a coal-fired to gas-fired power plant. Scott G. Silverstein, President & COO Footprint Power Management Inc., said the late-night noise from the plant was an "unplanned and unexpected" steam release that happens automatically when the plant's safety systems detect steam pressure above preset levels. Silverstein said such releases are part of the process of getting the plant ready to go online..

"If any of us could have chosen the time for yesterday’s release, we certainly would have chosen 11:47 am rather than pm, but the nature of running the unit continuously to find and correct any issues puts the timing of these random events beyond our control," Silverstein said. "The sound levels [residents] have experienced since last Thursday, outside of these limited steam releases, are indicative of the sound [they] will hear when the plant is fully on line."

So just how loud is the noise from the plant? "When the steam is released it sounds like a 747 plane hovering over my house," Sandy Luzinski, who ives a block away from the plant, said in an email to Salem Patch.

Footprint had warned residents of tests at the plant before they were conducted at its Salem power station in December. But those were supposed to be limited events completed within the week and, as the company noted in a press release, residents should hear the noise as "the sound of progress."

Those tests were also conducted between 7 am and 8 pm on weekdays. "These steam blows and the noise associated with them will NOT be a part of normal plant operations," the utility said in December.

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Photo by Footprint Power Salem Harbor Station.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).