Quiet hours in Kennewick, WA — also called the noise ordinance, nighttime noise rules, or residential quiet time — define the hours during which excessive noise is prohibited.
Kennewick has not codified a single posted clock-hour quiet period. Instead, nighttime noise inside the city is controlled by the Washington Department of Ecology's environmental noise rule, WAC 173-60-040, which reduces the maximum permissible noise level at any Class A (residential) receiving property by 10 dBA between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. The Kennewick Municipal Code's public-disturbance noise provisions, accessible through the Code Publishing portal, supply the local civil-infraction backstop.
Quiet hours in Kennewick are a state-law construct supplemented by city public-disturbance noise rules. Washington's Noise Control Act, RCW Chapter 70.107 (recodified as RCW 70A.20), delegates maximum environmental noise levels to the Department of Ecology, which adopted WAC Chapter 173-60. Under WAC 173-60-040, daytime maximums at a Class A (residential) receiving property are 55 dBA from a Class A source, 57 dBA from a Class B (commercial) source, and 60 dBA from a Class C (industrial) source; between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. all three limits are reduced by 10 dBA at residential receivers, producing nighttime caps of 45, 47, and 50 dBA. Short exceedances are tolerated: WAC 173-60-040(2) allows sounds 5 dBA over the limit for a total of 15 minutes in any hour, 10 dBA over for 5 minutes, and 15 dBA over for 1.5 minutes. The Kennewick Municipal Code's public-peace and nuisance chapters, hosted by Code Publishing, supply the civil-infraction enforcement layer for sounds that unreasonably disturb the peace.
Active disturbances are handled by Kennewick Police as civil infractions under the city's public-disturbance noise provisions. WAC 173-60 exceedances may be investigated under RCW 70A.20 by the Department of Ecology or by local jurisdictions that have adopted the state standards, with notice-and-correction procedures and civil penalties.
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