For the third summer here we have to face this issue.
Some of you guys talked about being used to live in noisy places; someone said he's living close to a railway; some other told of loud cars, loud parties, loud people around his house.
Well.
I had been camping every summer during my youth days, so I know how it is to sleep nearby a railway: the train can wake you up when it passes, then, often, you'll sleep again.
As for loud places, here it definitely was already loud with no need to add further noise; loud cars and motorbikes here come and go, loud people are down the street at night, there are loud parties too; but it's all every now and then.
The issue with the dance place is: more than three following hours of obsessive pop dance music with flipped screaming dj, LOUDER
15 dB AND MORE THAN THE COMMON NOISE.
The issue is: it's like this has been INSTITUTIONALIZED by local authorities; just it's out of consideration for EU directives, State's laws and local regulations; and I was not able to find any written derogation, or alternative temporary rules fixed for noise levels, neither sending written questions to the involved authorities.
As far as I can see after three years of search and questions, the thing works this way: since 2007 Sicily government authorized this kind of activities on beach (without fixing any new rule for noise, and delegating state police as for concerns the stop hour).
This can be great until applied on beaches located far from populated areas (which Sicily is plenty of); still fine on wide beaches where the terrain is plain, so that the distance from the houses, togheter with appropriate insulating boards treatment can assure low noise levels for the resident population.
But it's a different situation in the urban area where my house stands.
Here noise limits are fixed by city regulations (as prescribed by a State's law); the beach though falls within Sicily gov jurisdiction. Nevertheless it borders on a city area which has got certain noise limits.
Well. After our requests, we had here Country agency technicians a couple of times in the past years for noise measurements. In 2009 they took measurements at street level; they certified violations of the limits, then liable people has been sanctioned and committed for trial. Nevertheless this people have been authorized again for the summer 2010 (they installed some useless insulating boards to change papers a bit).
At the end of the summer 2010 we had Country agency technicians here again for measurements; this time they had takes inside house, at high floor. Beach noise was
15.4 dB louder than the common noise floor with open windows and
10 dB louder with closed windows. Consider that noise floor at night here can be exceeded up to 3dB (I guess many of you guys know that's required to double the source to have the Sound Pressure Level increased of 3dB).
Here is the documentation related to the measurements, trasmitted from the Country agency to the Law-court (sorry, it's in Italian language, but I guess you can get numbers and graphs)
http://www.fairworks.eu/files/documenti ... 10_low.pdf
In this occasion I checked my multimeter, the one I used for some noise levels takes in the past, and I've found out it has got an high electric noise floor (or something) so it's absolutely unaccurate for low spl values (it almost never goes under 40 dB values; it reports values over 40dB even if spl is actually around 30dB; also, its built in electret mic has few sensitivity in the low freq range).....
Some week after the take of these measuraments by A.R.P.A., the Penal court condamned liable people in first degree for the violations committed during summer 2009.
For the violations committed in 2010, the court has been fixed on Feb 2012.
In spite of this, the dance place has been authorized again this summer; and it's worse than before.
They're going louder; PA system has been boosted, especially in the ultra low end. DJs are screaming all time every working event.
We had a noise check again by the Country agency some week ago (quite early indeed this year, in comparison with the previous).
Just after that we got more noise and an increased number of events per week on the beach.
At now we have:
11.30 pm - 03.00 am on Friday
00.00 am - 03.00 am on Saturday
03.30 pm - 06.00 pm (dj broadcasting from the beach) and 11.30 pm - 02.00 am on Sunday
11.00 pm - 01.30 am on Monday.
It's far beyond the tolerable.
A State's law, written following EU directives, fixes 'attention levels', that are noise levels associated with potential risks for human health. The attention level at night, for a single hour of continous exposure has been fixed 5dB above the 'inside house limit', which is 50dB at night in this area.
We had been around 59dB for multiple hours at night; four days in a row at now.
It's hard to face; especially being already tried by events like the one occourred on Palm Sunday (I posted a topic here titled Fire, about that).
I still can't understand how they can authorize again.
...And I can't even leave for a holyday this year, since my mother is immobilized with a broken femour, and a few help from mine is needed daily.
maybe you should just get the gig down there. at least then you'd only have to deal with your own music... (jk)
