GEISHA ALON­ZO

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) will be crack­ing down on break­fast par­ties which refuse to ad­here to the Noise Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Rules. EMA of­fi­cials are hav­ing on­go­ing dis­cus­sions, not on­ly with break­fast par­ty pro­mot­ers, but all stake­hold­ers as Car­ni­val draws near­er, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Mario Singh said yes­ter­day.

He said the agency is al­so work­ing with the po­lice to en­sure com­pli­ance.

“In terms of break­fast par­ties, our man­ag­ing di­rec­tor has sig­nalled that we are tak­ing a look at it. The day­time lev­el is from 80 deci­bels and then from night time the lev­el goes down to 65 deci­bels,” he said.

Singh said with a noise vari­a­tion there is lax­i­ty for noise to go “a lit­tle above the noise lev­el” but there are cer­tain con­sid­er­a­tions.

“In the case of break­fast par­ties, de­pend­ing on when it starts, they will have to go to the stan­dard noise lev­el, or if there is a vari­a­tion the lev­el is per­mit­ted with­in the vari­a­tion,” he ex­plained.

He said the EMA does not look at the for­mat of the event but rather if it is com­ply­ing with the ap­plic­a­ble noise lev­el at the time.

“For day time there is a high­er lev­el as op­posed to night time where there is a low­er lev­el. Let’s say the par­ty starts at 4 am. That is the night time lev­el. When it goes to 8 am the noise lev­el goes up a bit be­cause that is day time lev­el,” Singh said.

He said week­ly dis­cus­sions are tak­ing place with stake­hold­ers and fac­tors con­sid­ered in­clude prox­im­i­ty to hos­pi­tals, res­i­dences and homes for the el­der­ly.

“Over the years we do a ros­ter of events to be mon­i­tored and we take in­to ac­count sen­si­tive re­cep­tors in the area of the sur­round­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“We al­so look at the his­to­ry of com­plaints and we in­ves­ti­gate these com­plaints from the pub­lic in mak­ing a de­ter­mi­na­tion as to where we would want to fo­cus our at­ten­tion,” Singh said.

Penal­ties in­clude fines from $10,000 up. Pro­mot­ers have to place a bond with the EMA be­fore the event and if the deci­bel lev­el is­not ad­hered to, the bond is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly lost. The pre­scribed fee for a sin­gle event is $250 and $1000 for mul­ti­ple events.