Excessive Noise Pollution from Corn Dryer: €900,000 Compensation Awarded

In the industrious and quiet region of Piedmont, precisely in the province of Cuneo, there is a cottage surrounded by the green of the countryside.

Before it was a renovated old cottage, now a cozy house surrounded by fruit plants, a garden as far as the eye can see and beautiful meadows stretching of the hills.

It is inhabited by a happy family, mother father and two little girls who love to play outdoors.

The road is far away and with it its dangers and noises.

Mornings and evenings are punctuated by the song of birds and the sounds of nature, it is all you can hear. The lark and the owl, the tiled and the crickets, the little girls love to guess the songs of the animals and runall around the house with theirfriendly dogs chasing lizards and small animals that venture among the vegetables of the garden.

Mom can do chores in the house and let the little ones play in the garden, in the shade of the blossoming apples, without worrying too much.

The house has been their property for six years now, and they wouldn't change it for anything in the world.

The corn dryer bursts into a family's life

It's one of these quiet mornings. The father is at work and the mother is cleaning up the kitchen with an eye to the little girls playing in thelawn. The lady can look forward the end of the housework and the time to sit outside, to enjoy the sun and silence.

Summer is over but the warm weather is still gentle, autumn seems to be late. At a certain time, the ground wind brings with it the smell of cut hay and you can hear in the distance the tractors returning to their farmhouses.

Suddenly a deafening mechanical noise pierces the bucolic silence that has reigned undisturbed for centuries in that place. At first, the lady doesn't understand where it is coming from, she pictures out they're doing work in the fields, or maybe it isgoing through one of those huge agricultural vehicles along the way. She waits for it to stop and gets back to doing the chores.

Unfortunately the noise continues and feels close, very close. Then she understands that the source of that incessant, disturbing sound is that strange machine that the Agricultural Consortium has placed fifty meters from the house.

It is a corn dryer that comes into operation fromSeptember to October, during the threshing period.Since then, their lives have changed.

Noise Pollution from an Agricultural Plant: A Family’s Legal Battle for Justice

In the rest of the year the dryer remains off but during those months the house is literally unviable.

It has been placed almost adjacent to the house, just across the border, and for sixty days it is running continuously, day and night. In fact, it works all the crops in the area, with a continuous stream of loads of corn that are emptied in the forecourt waiting to be inserted into the dryer.

At first they try to resist, but the din is unbearable. Neither adults nor girls can sleep. Birds flee and go to nest elsewhere, even dogs are frightened and do not stop barking.

Hell. The first solution is to install double glazing on the windows, in the hope that the noise will come muffled but nothing, the hum is too penetrating and makes its way even in the thick layer of the windows.

Then they think well to change the arrangement of the rooms. The little girls' bedrooms overlook the plant, needless to say, the poor little people cry all night and don't even want to go in there to play. They start to get angry because outside they can't stand and the luck of being able to grow up outdoors has now become the misfortune of not being able to play at home because the noise is too loud.

The room is exchanged for the laundry room, less frequented and certainly noisy because of the electrical appliances. But that doesn't work either, because the whole house is subjected to a noisy dribble.

The large garden surrounding the house has always been invaded by friends and relatives who can't wait to escape the chaos of the city and take refuge under the veranda, free to dine in joy without fear of bothering the neighbors with their loud voices.

Now this precious time is just a memory because no one is willing to hold back more than necessary in order to avoid becoming deaf.

Danger of economic devaluation of the house

It is impossible to live in that house under those conditions.

But why give up the perfect climate that they dreamed so much and in which they chose to live and grow their offspring? The couple also fear another aspect, the economic one. In fact, even if they decided to sell the house and move elsewhere, it would still be a loss because with such a noisy plant nearby, all interested buyers would be immediately discouraged.

They would be forced to sell it at a much lower price than the purchase price, with a large financial loss.

Above all, they try to have reason about the worsening of their quality of life: lack of sleep, the impossibility of concentrating and dialogue or doing homework is also negatively reflected on family harmony and quarrels are increasingly frequent.

The lawyer in Rome is tasked with silencing the corn dryer

A battle that lasted almost twenty years in which the couple were given demonstrations of solidarity by some residents exasperated by the constant noise, although living hundreds of meters away.

They had tried them all, writing letters, protesting in the offices, denouncing the situation to the City Major, but they had not solved anything.

When a Rome and civil law firm, on the forensic scene for generations, decided to adopt the defense of the case, it could not have imagined that that family had been enduring that situation for such a long time.

Eighteen years before surrendering and deciding to resort to the courts in 2015.

The Agricultural Consortium promises battle

Unfortunately, they have had to deal with the economic reasons of the Agricultural Consortium, which owns that plot of land and considers it strategic to bring the loads from the whole countryside together.

They have also had to endure the tensions of the various farmers, to whom the dryer is convenient and do not want any more obstacles to their craft, already so harsh and subjected to the vagaries of nature.

Maxi compensation and closure of the plant

In the end, justice triumphed. The line of defence proposed by the Rome law firm after suing the Provincial Agricultural Consortium proved victorious.

The family got record compensation for having to endure such deafening noises for all those years, which turned their lives into a real nightmare.

A whopping 900 thousand euros to all members, parents and two girls, now adult women. But it was not just about compensation, because the lawyers had also asked for the closure of the plant and the Tribunal accepted the request.

The dryer will remain closed until they find the system to put it into operation silently.

An unprecedented record

A real record, asproudly announcedby the triumphant lawyers. In the case of damages for harmful noise emissions, no court in Italy had gone that far.

A sign that the noises were really unbearable.