US State Grants Racetracks Legal Protection Against Noise Complaints

It’s an all too familiar and deeply frustrating story: houses get built near racetrack that’s been there for years, people move into houses, people complain about noise from racetrack, racetrack gets threatened with closure.

Even venues as iconic as Laguna Seca aren’t immune – despite having been there since 1957, steadily increasing property development in the surrounding area has led to growing complaints about the track’s operation, to the extent that it was threatened with closure last year (although its future now looks secure).

Now, though (and with a tip of our hats to Jalopnik for spotting it), one US state has taken a measure we can all get behind as car and motorsport enthusiasts, and given racetracks legal protection against noise complaints.

The state in question is Iowa, where a new law, HF645, has been passed that means neighbouring properties can’t file noise complaints against tracks, and government bodies can’t take legal action against them. Providing the tracks themselves are operating within existing noise limits, and have been around for longer than a potential complainant has owned their property, motorsport facilities are immune from any possible legal action.

Iowa isn’t a particularly major player in international (or even US-based) motorsports. Its biggest venue is the 30,000-capacity Iowa Speedway, which receives annual visits from both NASCAR and IndyCar. The state is, however, home to plenty of smaller asphalt and dirt ovals and drag strips, all types of venues that are under increasing threat from property development in the US.

Perhaps most impressively, nobody in either of Iowa’s two levels of government – the House of Representatives or the Senate – opposed the law. Of the 100 members of the House, 92 voted in favour while eight abstained, and it was a similar story in the Senate, with 45 in favour and five abstentions.

Hopefully, the law will serve as a model for not just other US states, but other countries around the world, to protect the motorsport venues we know and love for years to come.

State Capitol image: Thesavagenorwegian, CC BY 4.0