The Florida Department of Transportation will be using gas taxes from the entire state of Florida to give Viera residents a wall along I-95 to protect Viera residents from noise pollution. Hometown News reports that the 16-foot wall will be completed by the year 2010 and that the work is on schedule.

Although a small manufactured home community in Palm Bay had a wall completed several years ago, the vast majority homes within a quarter mile of I-95 have had I-95’s noise ever-present for several decades.

Apparently, the new community of Viera, not even an incorporated city, managed to get the county to prioritize their community first. Lost Lakes in Cocoa, another manufactured home community, is also scheduled.

With I-95 expanding to six lanes, it makes one wonder how long-time communities with long-time residents were passed up so that Viera got first dibs. The Hometown News quotes Florida Statute 335.17 which requires the FDOT to make use of noise-control methods along state highways “with particular emphasis on those highways located in or near urban-residential developments which abut such highway rights-of-way”.

Do the communities that have been here for thirty and forty years not count? I-95 literally slices Palm Bay in half. But no more walls for Palm Bay seem to be scheduled. How did Viera score this? The amount of residents that actually live along the I-95 corridor in Viera is considerably smaller than more populated areas like Palm Bay between SR192 and Malabar Road.