Saint John scrapyard noise wakes up neighbours

The American Iron and Metal scrapyard is being told to turn it down after some noisy loading kept nearby residents up all night.

The scrapyard, in the lower west side of Saint John, was loading a ship with 50,000 tonnes of scrap.

It was an around-the-clock operation that caused some headaches for people living nearby.

"It was very loud and it was inappropriately loud for a resident area at night," said Mark McGovern, who lives three blocks away.

Jim Quinn, the chief executive officer of the Saint John Port Authority, said the company has a plan to cut the noise.

"We’ll learn more from the second ship," he said.

"We'll take those lessons learned and carry them forward."

He said there were two main causes.

"One was front-end loaders with big steel buckets pushing material along concrete surfaces, and the second is new equipment that is used to move material from the dock to the ship, they’re very big big buckets," he said.

There have been concerns for months over the added noise from the American Iron and Metal facility.

The facility recently underwent a $30-million expansion.

'It doesn't bother me a bit'

But not everyone was shaken from their beds.

Mike Weaver, who lives one block away, had no complaints about the noise from the scrapyard.

"I figure as long as there’s noise, there’s people working," he said.

"And it doesn’t bother me a bit."

Neighbours will find out if the new loading procedures work when the next ship arrives in two weeks.

The port authority says it will be listening, too.