Stop the ‘Soquel Hum’, Neighbors Say, By Jondi Gumz

COMMUNITY NEWS Stop the ‘Soquel Hum’, Neighbors Say

By Jondi Gumz

Beekeeper Alayne Meeks began hearing the sound in October.

She lives on a ranch on North Rodeo Gulch Road in Soquel, two and a half miles from town.

After 50 years of quiet, suddenly there was this noise — a hum that never turned off. She checked her refrigerator and then her aquarium, but no.

Then two months ago, her neighbor Ryan Carle, a scientist, asked her, “Where’s that hum coming from?”

The two of them have been trying to answer that question ever since.

It’s a very low-frequency sound, “almost like my chair is vibrating,” Meeks said.

Not everyone can hear the hum.

Carle said he hears it, but his wife does not hear it.

He finds it so annoying, he is considering moving.

“It’s a sound that’s not going to stop,” he said. “Every night for the rest of our lives. For me, it’s a rumble, like an approaching plane that never shows up.”

Meeks said her friend on Cherryvale Avenue doesn’t hear it but her friend’s brother does hear it.

When Meeks contacted the office of county Supervisor John Leopold, his assistant, Tony Sloss, came out to listen but he didn’t hear anything.

She said Sloss reached out to PG&E who told him there was not a pattern of noise complaints.

NextDoor

Meeks asked her neighbors on the NextDoor social network for Soquel and found out lots of them are hearing the hum.

She found people are hearing the hum more since the March 16 shelter in place order to stay home.

Carle put together a map showing the locations where more than 25 neighbors report hearing the annoying hum.

Red dots representing neighborhoods reporting the hum are along the freeway with most of the yellow dots representing homeowners living in the mountains.

Neighbors who hear the hum are asked to connect with Meeks and Carle and their group, Stop the Soquel Hum, on NextDoor Soquel.

“The more complaints, the more people will take it seriously,” Carle said.

In Sherlockian fashion, they have identified a suspect: The removal of trees that had shielded PG&E’s Paul Sweet substation from the Dominican Oaks senior complex and the rest of the community.

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