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Home My WebLink AboutEmailed Comment from Lucy Jackson1 Brandon DeCriscio From:CPE Freeway Noise <cpefreewaynoise@gmail.com> Sent:Sunday, August 9, 2026 9:32 PM To:City Clerk; Gloria Harper Cc:Patty Senecal Subject:Public Comment for City Council Meeting, August 10, 2026, I-405 Freeway Noise, College Park East Dear City Clerk, Please enter this letter into the public record for the City Council meeting of August 10, 2026, and share it with the Mayor, all Council Members, and the City Manager. My name is Lucy Jackson. I am a resident of College Park East and the community representative for the CPE Freeway Noise Team. I previously presented this issue to the City Council on March 9, 2026. I am writing today to provide an update on the data we have collected since then and to respectfully request the active support of the Mayor and all Council Members in moving this forward with Caltrans. OVERVIEW This community has been engaged with the City on this issue since January 2025. The most recent dialogue took place on July 15, 2026, in a productive meeting with Councilmember Senecal, Police Chief Henderson, City Manager Gallegos and Team. We are grateful for that continued engagement. We are now asking the full Council to hear where things stand and to lend their active support to moving this forward with Caltrans. WHAT THE DATA SHOWS Over the past several months, CPE residents have conducted an independent noise monitoring study across seven streets in the neighborhood. Every site with sufficient data meets or exceeds the federal HUD 65 dBA Day-Night Average Level threshold, the level the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development classifies as Normally Unacceptable for residential areas. Our dataset, collected at several locations, over 50 recording sessions and more than 2.1 million individual time-stamped readings, produced an overall Leq of 68.5 dBA (as of 8/9/26). This is 18.5 dBA above the Seal Beach Municipal Code nighttime limit of 50 dBA and 3.6 dBA above the federal HUD threshold. No hour of the day or night falls within legally acceptable noise limits. Peak readings across the seven monitored sites reached as high as 95.4 dBA, recorded not on Almond Avenue but on Birchwood Avenue, two full blocks from the wall. This confirms that the noise impact extends well beyond the front row of homes and affects the entire neighborhood. WHAT RESIDENTS ARE SAYING We have conducted a resident survey now with 56 household responses from College Park East. The results are published on our website and speak for themselves: 2 96.4% of respondents support the City taking stronger, more direct action on noise 91.1% are concerned their property value is being negatively affected by freeway noise 64.3% report daily or near-daily disruption to their lives Respondents have lived in College Park East for between 1 and 58 or more years. This is not a complaint from recent arrivals. It is a shared, long-standing quality of life issue affecting residents across every generation of tenure in this neighborhood. More survey responses are coming in regularly. WE INVITE THE COUNCIL TO VISIT OUR SITE We encourage every Council Member and the Mayor to visit https://cpenoisemap.netlify.app/ before or after tonight's meeting. The site includes an interactive noise map where you can click on any pin across the neighborhood to see the measured noise levels at that location, a Solutions section with technical references supporting each proposed mitigation, and a Survey Results page showing the full resident response data. Please note: our community website is maintained by volunteers and is updated monthly at best. The data presented there is not live. We have additional residents in queue to submit noise readings and survey responses, so the picture will only grow stronger over time. THE SOLUTIONS ARE STANDARD AND PROVEN We are not asking for anything new or experimental. The CPE Freeway Noise Team has identified several mitigation options, all of which are already deployed on California freeways and all supported by Caltrans own published technical reports and FHWA guidance documents: 1. Rubberized open-grade asphalt (RHMA-O) and double-layer porous asphalt (DLPA) on the I-405 travel lanes. Both are proven quieter pavement technologies documented in Caltrans own Quieter Pavement guidance manual, reducing tire and road noise by 4 to 8 dBA at the source. 2. A taller sound wall with acoustic T-profile top caps, which adds meaningful insertion loss without requiring a full wall rebuild. 3. Absorptive facing on the freeway side of the existing wall, which converts the current reflective concrete surface into a noise-absorbing barrier. Our minimum goal is to bring all areas of College Park East within Seal Beach Municipal Code limits of 55 dBA daytime and 50 dBA nighttime. Based on our current measured levels, this requires a noise minimum reduction of 15 dBA across the neighborhood. The combination of solutions listed above is capable of achieving that target using technology Caltrans already specifies on other California freeways. We want to be transparent with the Council: these solutions were identified by residents through independent research. We are not acoustical engineers. This community needs professional acoustic support to properly evaluate, specify, and advocate for the right combination of solutions for this specific corridor. That professional engagement is something we are asking the City to help facilitate. Rossmoor, our immediate neighbor on the same I-405 corridor, organized its residents and won part of this fight in 2018 with just 261 petition signatures and got their wall upgraded. We have more data, more residents, a stronger regulatory case, and 18 months of documented engagement with the City. If Rossmoor succeeded with 261 signatures, College Park East must! (https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/noise-abatement-405-freeway-bordering-rossmoor/) 3 WHAT WE ARE ASKING OF THIS COUNCIL We respectfully ask the Mayor and all Council Members to actively support City staff in taking formal action with Caltrans on behalf of College Park East residents. The specific form that action takes is for the City and its advisors to determine. What we ask is that it happen, that it happen before Q4 2026, and that it be documented in writing so that Caltrans is formally on notice. This is time-sensitive. The I-405 resurfacing cycle is a finite window. If quieter pavement is not formally requested before the next paving cycle is scheduled, the opportunity will not return for seven to ten years. Every month of delay narrows that window further. We have been raising this issue since January 2025. We have the data, the survey, the precedent, and the regulatory framework. What we need now is the City of Seal Beach standing firmly with its residents. Our full dataset, interactive noise map, survey results, and technical references are available at: https://cpenoisemap.netlify.app/ Thank you for your time and for your commitment to the residents of College Park East. Respectfully, Lucy Jackson Community Representative, CPE Freeway Noise Team