Guest commentary: Highway noise continues to batter property owners in Cypress Woods

The March 7 guest commentary, “Widened interstate is disturbing our community” by Cheryl Poteet, very accurately portrays a parallel situation that exists here in Cypress Woods Golf & Country Club.

We are a beautiful golf and country club community of close to 800 single-family homes and condominiums that border Interstate 75, just south of Quail West and north of Immokalee Road.

We, too, have been fighting this battle for five years with all of the appropriate parties, primarily the Florida Department of Transportation, aka FDOT, as well as our elected officials in Tallahassee.

We desperately need a sound wall, but all efforts to date to get one have been futile, and are met with a continuing sense of frustration by our residents. Tom Henning, our Collier County commissioner, has been very helpful in providing advice and direction, but there is little more he can do as it is a state issue.

Fully 95 percent of our community was built after FDOT did a sound study that indicated we did not qualify, as the buildings were located beyond the range that qualifies for a wall. When the study was done that was true, but 95 percent of the units had not yet been built.

Their response to that is always the same: “No new study can be done until the next phase going to 10 lanes commences.”

And “There was nothing in the now-completed phase budgeted for new studies for a sound barrier wall at Cypress Woods.”

They are always cordial, always professional and always say “no.”

As part of the I-75 widening project, they cut down all of the trees that were serving as an acceptable sound barrier and they never replaced them with even one tree. All that did for Cypress Woods was to intensify the road noise. When questioned, the response was, “That is not part of the plan.”

There has been no rhyme or reason as to why walls are built in so many areas of I-75 with nothing but vacant land behind them. You see them all along I-75. Check out the very high wall located at the exit for Miromar Outlets that has only the beautiful Design Center building and parking lot behind it.

Where are our elected Florida representatives on this? They, too, are cordial, but quickly refer you to FDOT and you are back to square one.

We have one very dedicated resident who has devoted countless hours to this effort, and he had his engine charged by the Poteet article. He contacted her and was told there are other concerned neighborhoods coming forward and there will be an upcoming joint meeting in an effort to get something positive rolling.

Cypress Woods will be represented.

There is strength in numbers.

Thanks to Cheryl Poteet for opening up this can of worms and spearheading the efforts to have our concerns responded to with some positive action.

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