The fight against noise pol­lu­tion just got a ma­jor boost fol­low­ing the ad­just­ment to the mon­i­tor­ing pe­ri­od for noise lev­els from three hours to 30 min­utes, which means mon­i­tor­ing agen­cies would be able to cov­er more ar­eas where noise pol­lu­tion may be oc­cur­ring.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) re­port­ed to­day that it “has suc­cess­ful­ly amend­ed Rule 2 of the Noise Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Rules, 2001 (“NPCR”) which re­duces the time­frame re­quired to mon­i­tor noise lev­els from three hours to thir­ty min­utes.”

“The re­duc­tion in the time­frame to mon­i­tor noise lev­els is one mile­stone in the fight against noise pol­lu­tion as it in­creas­es the EMA’s abil­i­ty to mon­i­tor a larg­er num­ber of events and ac­tiv­i­ties in a giv­en day and gen­er­ate noise lev­el read­ings with greater ef­fi­cien­cy,” the EMA said in a state­ment, not­ing that the amend­ment “ap­plies to ac­tiv­i­ties be­ing un­der­tak­en with Noise Vari­a­tion Per­mits.” 

Notwith­stand­ing the amend­ment, the EMA has re­newed its call for cit­i­zens to act re­spon­si­bly when it comes to gen­er­at­ing noise.

“An all-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach is crit­i­cal to ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress the scourge of noise pol­lu­tion.  The sup­port of cit­i­zens is need­ed to act re­spon­si­bly and re­spect­ful­ly to their neigh­bours and in their com­mu­ni­ties with an un­der­stand­ing that noise pol­lu­tion is dele­te­ri­ous to all,” the en­vi­ron­men­tal agency ob­served.

The EMA added: “With the con­tin­ued sup­port of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er en­ti­ties re­spon­si­ble for the con­trol and man­age­ment of noise in Trinidad and To­ba­go, this amend­ment is ex­pect­ed to pro­mote greater com­pli­ance for the re­lief of cit­i­zens and com­mu­ni­ties who are ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by noise pol­lu­tion.”