(ABC 6 News) – If one were to walk around the North Country Neighborhood in Owatonna, they may hear birds chirping or kids playing and very little traffic.

All of that could change as Steele County is partnering with the city of Owatonna and the State of Minnesota to put in a major highway called the East Side Corridor (pictured below) that passes through the backyards of several homes.

Melissa Zimmerman is a homeowner in the North Country Neighborhood and she joins others who are outraged for several reasons but a big one that kept coming up was the amount of noise that could come with thousands of vehicles passing through each day.

“We don’t have the ability to minimize or mitigate any of those noises coming at our house and those noise have substantial risks for developmental delays, heart attacks,” Zimmerman said.

Matthew Sennott is Zimmerman’s next door neighbor and he says he wants the county to provide some kind of noise relief after he says federal funding for a noise wall was taken away.

“Either build a wall, which I mean honestly who wants a sound wall in Owatonna, if that’s all that we get, obviously that’s going to mitigate the safety and noise issues,” Sennott said.

The two homeowners showed ABC 6 News how close the project would be to the back of the affected homes, and the danger that comes with it as the homeowner said they have four kids, two of which are four years old.

ABC 6 News reached out to the city of Owatonna at around 3:30 p.m., and a city staff responded saying no one would be available until Friday morning.

ABC 6 is scheduled to meet with city officials on Friday and is working to learn more about the city’s goals with the project and if they have actively seeked the public’s opinion.

More information on the project can be found here.