Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has re­mind­ed fete pro­mot­ers that they are still re­quired to com­ply with the Noise Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Rules (NPCR), even on cor­po­rate or pri­vate­ly owned prop­er­ties.

The re­minder came af­ter the Gov­ern­ment stopped, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, all fetes at sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties across the coun­try. These in­clude the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (BLCA), the Jean Pierre Com­plex and the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, where ma­jor events such as Stink and Dut­ty, Xpe­ri­ence and First Jam take place an­nu­al­ly.

“These lo­ca­tions are not ex­empt from com­pli­ance. All venues must ad­here to the NPCR and will be sub­ject to per­mit­ting, mon­i­tor­ing and en­force­ment,” the EMA said.

In re­sponse to ques­tions sent by Guardian Me­dia, the EMA said that in sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to re­duce noise pol­lu­tion, it will be im­ple­ment­ing strength­ened pre-Car­ni­val stake­hold­er en­gage­ment, in­clud­ing ses­sions with the po­lice, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor.

The EMA al­so plans to in­crease field mon­i­tor­ing and co­or­di­nat­ed night op­er­a­tions, stat­ing that en­gi­neer­ing con­trols rep­re­sent glob­al best prac­tice for en­ter­tain­ment-in­dus­try noise mit­i­ga­tion and align with the EMA’s rec­om­men­da­tions pre­vi­ous­ly shared with event pro­mot­ers and in­dus­try stake­hold­ers.

And as the au­thor­i­ty con­tin­ues work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to ad­vance a na­tion­al pol­i­cy po­si­tion on noise pol­lu­tion, it has sub­mit­ted a po­si­tion pa­per on fire­works man­age­ment, rec­om­mend­ing a ban on tra­di­tion­al ex­plo­sive fire­works.

Al­so on the agen­da for the new board is the mod­erni­sa­tion of the con­trol rules. This in­cludes up­dat­ing thresh­olds, such as mod­ernising the NPCR with up­dat­ed deci­bel stan­dards and event com­pli­ance re­quire­ments, in­tro­duc­ing tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven mon­i­tor­ing tools, such as launch­ing the Noise Track­er TT App to sup­port re­al-time re­port­ing and trans­paren­cy, and im­prov­ing en­force­ment ef­fi­cien­cy.

“These mea­sures form part of a broad­er reg­u­la­to­ry and pub­lic health man­date in­tend­ed to bal­ance cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion with com­mu­ni­ty well­be­ing,” the EMA said.