Noise investigations keep on humming up short

THE hopes of some hum-harassed residents of Omagh recently took a hit when two almost-identical investigations in England came to a close without any results.

Sleep-starved and answer-hungry, many people in the county town have been patiently waiting for months for Fermanagh and Omagh District Council (FODC)to locate the source of a mysterious sound, which some claim has caused them countless nights of unrest.

However, as the search lingers on behind the council’s investigative curtain, the recent failure of two nearly-indistinguishable probes in England has caused some Omagh people to lose confidence in their local government authority’s ability to get to the truth.

Last week, citizens in the town of Immingham were told by officials there that the origin of their aural angst might never be discovered.

Breaking the bad news to irate residents, North East Lincolnshire Council said it had ‘drawn a blank’ in their investigations into the low-level noise that has been heard across the town for a number of years.

The vacuum left by their non-conclusion has since been repopulated by unsubstantiated theories that were rife before the council took action, including assertions that the drone could be coming from nearby factories, oil refineries or underground cables.

But it is not only the good people of Immingham who feel let down by their council’s futile efforts. A few months ago, residents in the ‘tortured’ West Yorkshire village of Holmfield were delivered equally disappointing news by their municipal power.

The people who live in the rural dwelling, not far from Halifax, some of whom claim distress caused by the hum has actually damaged their health, were told in October that the source of their noise nuisance ‘could not be identified’.

Addressing the inhabitants of the small community, Calderdale Council said it had left ‘no stone unturned’ but could not ‘evidence a statutory noise nuisance’.

Like Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, both English authorities hired in noise specialist companies to help them in their investigations.

Maybe it is because of these similarities – both in terms of the nature of the noises being investigated and the methods employed to get to the bottom of them – that many Omagh people are starting to worry that FODC might not be able to the come up with the answers they so badly crave.