Consensus sought on noise laws

Chamikara Weerasinghe

COLOMBO: The Central Environment Authority will take steps to introduce legislation to prevent noise pollution.

The Supreme Court had accepted the Central Environment Authority's proposals in this regard and the draft proposals are now with the Legal Draftsman's Department for final touches.

The Director General of the Central Environment Authority (CEA), Pasan Gunasena said they would hold a Symposium on September 13 to indicate their position on the proposals.

Environment and Natural Resources Minister Champaka Ranawaka is expected to participate in the symposium, which will be open to the public including the parties directly or indirectly affected by noise pollution.

CEA Director General Gunasena said, the new regulations have a special bearing on community based noise pollution as there have not been substantial legislature in this regard.

" The existing legislation is based on industrial noise pollution," he said. The Central Environment Authority had made the relevent proposals following an order by the Supreme Court to formulate regulations to set out accepted standards with regard to community noise.

The CEA appointed an 11-member expert technical committee to draft the regulations following this order. On the draft regulations being presented to the Supreme Court, an environmental NGO and an interested person had intervened and expressed their concerns about the regulations.

The proposals had been redrafted after considering the ideas of these two parties before the draft was submitted to the Supreme Court for the second time.