Yvonne Ba­boolal

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Hu­bert Vol­ney's court at­tempt to stop the WASA Car­ni­val fete could be a sig­nal of things to come, pres­i­dent of the WASA Sports Club, pro­mot­er of the event, said yes­ter­day. "Oth­ers should have some kind of con­cern," John said, re­spond­ing to fears by pro­mot­ers about the stag­ing of their own fetes.

"We nev­er had any sit­u­a­tion like this be­fore in the 20-plus years we have been stag­ing the fete."

He said their ap­pli­ca­tion to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) had nev­er been turned down.

The po­lice and the Fire Ser­vices al­so sub­mit­ted a re­port to the court and the WASA Sports Club al­ways was grant­ed a li­cence to stage the fete, he added. "We nev­er had com­plaints from res­i­dents about the deci­bel lev­el of the mu­sic. So far, we have been with­in the lev­el," he added. John said he saw no rea­son why they should not be able to car­ry on the fete this year.

He said he was not wor­ried and he hoped Vol­ney, who was hos­pi­talised yes­ter­day, would have a speedy re­cov­ery. On Wednes­day, Vol­ney, St Joseph MP, made an ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore the Li­cens­ing Com­mit­tee at the Tu­na­puna Mag­is­trates' Court to stop the WASA fete. EMA noise ad­min­is­tra­tor, Na­dia Tewarie, and le­gal of­fi­cer, Jen­nifer Juter­am, al­so were present for the court hear­ing.

Vol­ney said the EMA had joined the ob­jec­tion to the stag­ing of the fete. He said nurs­es at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex said the noise lev­el from speak­er box­es af­fect­ed ba­bies, chil­dren and oth­er pa­tients. He said his con­stituents around the WASA recre­ation ground, where the fete is held, al­so have com­plained about the noise. Up to press time, the T&T Guardian was un­able to get a re­sponse from the EMA on the mat­ter.

Noise Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Rules 2001 for Zone 111- Gen­er­al ar­eas:

• Night-time lim­its - From 8 pm to 8 am the con­tin­u­ous sound pres­sure lev­el should not ex­ceed 5 dBA above the back­ground lev­el and the in­stan­ta­neous un­weighed peak sound pres­sure lev­el should not ex­ceed 115 dB; and,

• A vari­a­tion grant­ed by the EMA can be re­voked if it ap­pears the con­tin­ued noise emis­sion can cause se­ri­ous harm to the en­vi­ron­ment or hu­man health.