Of­fi­cials of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) were present at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court on Wednes­day for the rul­ing of the Li­cens­ing Com­mit­tee in the mat­ter of an Oc­ca­sion­al Dance­hall li­cence ap­pli­ca­tion for the Girl Pow­er fete which was sched­uled to take place yes­ter­day at Jen­ny's Carpark, Cipri­ani Boule­vard, Port of Spain. The Com­mit­tee was chaired by Mag­is­trate Cheryl Blake.

At a hear­ing just one week be­fore, res­i­dents of Cipri­ani Boule­vard ob­ject­ed to the host­ing of the event as they were con­cerned about the ex­ces­sive noise that would em­anate from this event, as well as oth­er nui­sances that might arise. Dur­ing the hear­ing, which con­tin­ued this week, the Com­mit­tee heard ev­i­dence from the EMA, the res­i­dents, event pro­mot­ers and the own­er of the venue. Af­ter de­lib­er­a­tion of all the in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in the mat­ter, the Com­mit­tee grant­ed the li­cence, sub­ject to var­i­ous con­di­tions.

Mag­is­trate Blake or­dered that the pro­mot­er con­struct a 20-foot high scaf­fold­ing and ply wall to the north­ern side of the venue to re­duce the noise that would ad­verse­ly af­fect the res­i­dents in that di­rec­tion. Al­so, po­lice pres­ence was re­quired at the event two hours pri­or to its start and one hour af­ter it end­ed. This was to min­imise in­dis­crim­i­nate park­ing and to en­sure law and or­der was main­tained by pa­trons leav­ing the event.

Of­fi­cers of the EMA's En­vi­ron­men­tal Po­lice Unit (EPU) were sta­tioned at the event to en­sure the deci­bel lev­el of 65dBA was not ex­ceed­ed. The du­ra­tion of the event was al­so re­duced from 9 pm to 7 am to 10 pm to 5 am. The mag­is­trate al­so em­pha­sised that the Po­lice Ser­vice and the EPU have the au­thor­i­ty to shut down the event un­der sec­tion 4A (3(b) of the The­atres and Dance Halls Act Chap­ter 21:03, if any con­di­tion of the li­cence is not com­plied with.