It’s pretty hard not to notice the numerous the tri-axle trucks trekking through the area.

In just one hour, 19 dump trucks turned onto Mauch Chunk Road in Palmerton. One truck after another headed into the Northface Development Inc., the site of the former New Jersey Zinc plant. Four school buses also traveled down the road.“They go right past my house every day,” said Glennis Park, who lives on Mauch Chunk Road. “I know these guys have to work, but I’ll be glad when it’s over.”Northface obtained the Department of Environmental Protection permit on Dec. 23, 2013. It doesn’t expire until Dec. 23, 2018.It doesn’t matter what the weather or the season, the trucks just keep coming through, Park said. One threw off rubble that damaged his car.“Put a hole in my windshield,” he said.Susan Solt, who also lives along Mauch Chunk Road, said she saw about 170 trucks go past her house every day last summer. They would arrive as early as 4:30 a.m. and began dumping soil as soon as the site opened at 6 a.m. From her yard, high-pitched beeping, when trucks back up, rings through the air almost nonstop as the trucks spill their contents on the ground through open tailgates. The beeping is followed by the bang of the tailgate as it closes shut. Bang, silence, then bang again, Monday through Friday and sometimes on Saturday, Solt said.“It’s when you come outside you really hear it,” she said. “You do kind of get used to it.”Although supervisors at Eldred and Polk townships haven’t received complaints about the truck traffic, Brian Ahner, the Polk Township roadmaster and chairman of the board of supervisors, expressed his own concerns.“It seems like 150 to 200 trucks go through a day,” Ahner said. “I’m really surprised but they’re on state roads, so what do you do?”When the truck traffic first started, several oversized trucks were caught going across the bridge at Route 534, he said. The bridge weight limit is 23 tons, and these trucks weigh more than that.Sean Brown, a spokesman from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, said tri-axle dump trucks generally weigh 80,000 pounds or 40 tons when full.“They were clearly overweight running over that bridge,” Ahner said. He is concerned trucks will take to the township’s rural roads when the bridge replacement project gets underway. “Trucks damage a road so much quicker than cars.”Brent Green, a supervisor for Lower Towamensing Township, said tri-axle trucks have been running on the township’s rural roads. There were two separate incidents last year when dump trucks tried to go down Golf Road and had a difficult time negotiating the narrow road and snakelike turns, he said. One truck ran into aresident’s shed. Another dump truck rolled over.“When they get into the borough, they have a serious potential of rolling over into a home,” Green said.That’s why Lower Towamensing Township, where Golf Road originates off Fireline Road, and Palmerton worked together to post truck restrictions on the road. The township side has signs that tell drivers the road is steep and trucks over 27 tons are not permitted to go down. The borough has signs stating that trucks are prohibited, except for local deliveries.Palmerton borough manager Rodger Danielson said the borough’s police department is forming a truck enforcement unit. One of their police officers completed training in March. When the police department is ready to start checking trucks for proper weight, Danielson doesn’t know.“When we do, you better believe we will be enforcing it,” he said.Mauch Chunk Road was constructed for heavy industrial traffic, but the section where it was widened was not. Danielson said wear is already evident in that section. One option he’d like to look into for taking in revenue to help pay for fixing the roads is bonding. This requires trucking companies that regular use a road to pay a bond to aid is fixing the road.Sean Brown, from PennDOT, said there aren’t any roads locally that are bonded and there isn’t any plans to pursue it.George Petrole, chief operating officer for Northface Development LLC, said, “Officially, no comment,” when asked questions about the truck traffic coming in and out of the site.