MACHIAS – Joey Ensminger pulls the accelerator of his Suzuki 125 and starts off toward a jump platform.
In a moment, Ensminger, 20, flies into the cloudless blue sky. Up in the air, he brings his feet forward, putting them together in front of the handlebars.
Jennifer Buchanan / The Herald
“I’m by myself. I’m away from people. Nobody can tell me what to do. It’s kind of a stress reliever for me,” says Ensminger, who has been riding a dirt bike since he was a boy at his father’s property in Machias.
But Ensminger’s stress reliever is a stress booster for Jon Lambie, who lives about 100 yards from the dirt track.
“The noise is just unbearable,” said Lambie, a Vietnam veteran who said he has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Other neighbors feel the same way, Lambie said. They say the track violates the county’s noise ordinance and have called the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office numerous times.
Deputies have given tickets to Ensminger’s father, Joe, 40, the track’s owner. He faces three criminal charges; each could force him to pay up to a $1,000 fine and/or serve up to 90 days in jail.
A jury trial of the case is set at Evergreen District Court in Monroe Wednesday.
Joe Ensminger said other neighbors support the track.
Sherman Lillie, 45, who lives close to the track, said the noise doesn’t bother him.
“Absolutely not,” Lillie said. “In fact, it’s entertaining.”
Jennifer Buchanan / The Herald
The county prosecutor’s office has filed charges against Joe Ensminger for allegedly violating a provision of the noise law, which prohibits off-road vehicles from being operated “in a manner that interferes with the peace and comfort of persons in rural or residential districts.”
Meanwhile, another provision in the law sets permissible sound levels based on decibels for motor vehicles. Joe Ensminger said the decibels he measured at the track were lower than the ordinance allows.
“It’s contradicting itself,” he said of the noise law.
Don Lyderson, Joe Ensminger’s lawyer from Everett, said he’s negotiating with the prosecutor’s office to take the decibel provision into account.
The prosecutor’s and sheriff’s offices declined to comment on the ambiguity of the noise law.
Joe Ensminger continues to let his son and his friends ride on the track a few days per week. Whenever motorcycles rev up, neighbors call the sheriff’s office and deputies respond, he said.
A recent afternoon was no exception. Less than an hour after Joey Ensminger jumped into the air on his motorcycle, Deputy Russ Quay arrived.
Like other deputies, Quay said he doesn’t measure decibels to enforce the noise ordinance. The law is loosely written and hard to enforce, the deputy said.
“Well, let me put it this way, it’s a violation of an ambiguous ordinance,” Quay said.
He told Joe Ensminger to stop the riders anyway. “It’s too bad the parties involved can’t resolve it,” Quay said.
If the track gets shut down, Joey Ensminger and his friends would have to go to a commercial track to practice for competitions, he said. The nearest one is in Monroe, where he has to pay about $40 per day, Joe Ensminger said. But that one also may cease to exist. The county is trying to shut it down because it was built on farmland without permits, against the state’s Growth Management Act.
“There is no middle of nowhere. You can’t go and ride,” Joe Ensminger said of the lack of motorcycle tracks for youths in the county.
Joey Ensminger said he is willing to set up a riding schedule, with which track opponents can live, but they wouldn’t discuss the issue.
“I think they are being very unreasonable,” he said.
Lambie said he moved to Machias in 1989, looking for solitude. Back then, Joey Ensminger was a boy riding a small bike. But as he grew up, his bikes got bigger – and louder.
Now the noise is beyond the tolerance of Lambie, who is retired and stays home most of the time.
“We’re relying on the law -what the law is supposed to do,” Lambie said.
Reporter Yoshiaki Nohara: 425-339-3029 or ynohara@heraldnet.com.
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