Noise Levels in New Harbor, ME | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map

43 dBA
Average noise across New Harbor
Quiet suburban street at night
25
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
6% of New Harbor residents
60 dBA
Loudest residential point
Normal conversation an arm’s length away

This map shows modeled outdoor noise across New Harbor at 100-meter resolution, combining road, aviation, and rail sources. Green areas measure below 45 dBA. Orange and red exceed the EPA's 55 dBA outdoor threshold linked to long-term health effects. Use the layer toggles to view each source on its own or all together.

Overall
Road
Rail
Aviation
New Harbor, ME Map of Noise Levels in New Harbor
Click the map to explore
35 45 55 70 90
Quietest (dBA) Loudest
Colorblind friendly off

What the numbers sound like

  • 30 dBAWhisper
  • 40 dBASoft rainfall
  • 45 dBAQuiet suburban street at night
  • 50 dBAQuiet office
  • 55 dBAEPA outdoor threshold: light traffic 100 ft away
  • 60 dBANormal conversation an arm's length away
  • 65 dBABusy restaurant
  • 70 dBAHighway traffic 50 ft away
  • 80 dBACity bus interior

Population Above the EPA Outdoor Threshold

The EPA's 55 dBA outdoor reference level is a common benchmark for residential noise exposure, especially for activity interference, annoyance, and long-term community noise concerns. About 25 New Harbor residents, or 5.6%, live above that level. By land area, 16.2% of New Harbor is above 55 dBA.

See how noise in New Harbor compares to similar-sized cities.

Noise by Part of New Harbor

Average noise levels for New Harbor residents, grouped by direction from the center of New Harbor. Northern New Harbor carries the highest population-weighted average; Central New Harbor carries the lowest. Just 0% of residents in Central New Harbor live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Northern New Harbor.

Central New Harbor

41.2 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night

0% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Eastern New Harbor

41.6 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night

0% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Northern New Harbor

50.9 dBA · Moderate
Quiet office

26% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Southern New Harbor

44.9 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night

0% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Northern New Harbor sounds about 96% louder than Central New Harbor to the human ear, a 9.7 dBA gap. Every 10 dBA roughly doubles perceived loudness. Within any of these directions, two homes a quarter mile apart can still differ by 10 or more dBA depending on how close they sit to a major highway.

How far back from St Rte 130 do you need to be?

St Rte 130 produces an estimated 58 dBA at its loudest centerline points. Noise drops logarithmically with distance, with the exact rate depending on what's between you and the road. Tree cover, walls, terrain, and pavement type all matter. At roughly a quarter mile back, traffic fades into the noise level of a soft rainfall.

At source
58 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
165 ft
46 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
330 ft
38 dBA
Soft rainfall
660 ft
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
¼ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall

Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 47% of New Harbor sits under tree canopy (heavier than most cities) and roughly 15% is impervious surface like pavement and rooftops. Both are folded into the per-place decay rate above. Heavier canopy pulls noise down faster with distance; impervious surfaces slow the drop.

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How Noise Is Distributed Across New Harbor

The bar chart below shows the share of New Harbor residents in each noise band. About 94% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 0% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.

How New Harbor Compares

New Harbor sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how New Harbor's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Chamberlain, Pemaquid, Round Pond, and South Bristol.

Average noise level (dBA)

New Harbor's 43.3 dBA pop-weighted average is at the quieter end of the spectrum. Maine as a whole averages 48.0 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than New Harbor because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.

Share of residents above 55 dBA

About 5.6% of New Harbor residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's more than any of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 16.2% of New Harbor's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Maine average of 17.5% and a national average of 28.1%.

What This Means if You're Moving to New Harbor

  • Distance from highways matters more than the neighborhood name. Two homes in the same zip code can differ by 20 dBA if one sits 100 meters from St Rte 130 and the other 500 meters away. The model captures this at 100-meter resolution, so noise exposure changes block by block.
  • Tree canopy can help reduce modeled noise exposure. Roughly 47% of New Harbor is under tree cover (heavier than most cities), and the dominant land cover is low-intensity developed land. Both are measured from federal USDA Forest Service and USGS satellite imagery at 30-meter resolution. Streets with 60% or higher canopy show 3 to 5 dBA lower noise than comparable streets with bare ground or pavement, which is why the per-place decay rate above already accounts for it.

Sources & Methodology

The BestNeighborhood noise model is calibrated against nearly one million federal ground-truth measurements across four states. Road noise is computed from segment-level federal traffic data and propagated outward using physics-based acoustic decay, with attenuation rates that depend on the surrounding land cover.

Federal datasets used:

FHWA Highway Performance Monitoring System: road geometry, traffic counts, lane configuration
U.S. DoT Bureau of Transportation Statistics National Transportation Noise Map: aviation and rail noise, road calibration ground truth
USGS / MRLC National Land Cover Database: land cover and impervious surface coverage
USDA Forest Service Tree Canopy Cover: vegetation density for sound propagation
U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line: block-level geography and population
U.S. EPA Levels Document: 55 dBA outdoor reference level

All inputs are published federal datasets. Block-level noise is computed by combining road, rail, and aviation sound sources in the energy domain, the same physics used in professional environmental noise assessments. Read the full methodology.

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