Investigation validated residential complaints in June 2022
Due to residents lodging noise complaints to Brisbane City Council, Dionysus Transport Services (DTS) has been under investigation since June 2022 for a noise breach of the Environmental Protection Act. However they currently hold a 24/7 license to operate with no noise restrictions.
Noise monitoring from a residence confirmed that the night time noise creates environmental harm and the business was served an Environmental Investigation Notice under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (EPA94), on 28 June 2022.
How the noise needs to be proved as harmful has many hoops to jump through :
The issue with the compliance criteria in the City Plan is that the levels are time-averaged.
This means the noise needs to meet a single level for the entire day (7am-6pm) 11hrs, evening (6pm-10pm) 4hrs, and night (10pm-7am) 9hrs periods.
For example, using the daytime period 7am-6pm, this means the operation of the stacker could be noisy for 8 hours then quiet for 3 hours. The noise level from the site would be averaged over the total 11 hour period.
The same applies for the evening and night. Only the Night period has specific limits on the impact noises.