Environmental Law and Noise Nuisance: A Report on Top Turbine's Case

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of noise nuisance laws, focusing on both statutory and common law definitions, and explores the legal principles applicable to environmental noise pollution. It examines a case scenario involving Top Turbines, a wind turbine manufacturer facing complaints of noise nuisance from a residents association (CHRA). The report delves into the Environmental Protection Act, 1990, and the Noise and Statutory Nuisance Act, 1993, outlining the legal framework and potential liabilities. It then explores the defenses available to companies like Top Turbines, including statutory authority, time, and public interest. Furthermore, the report investigates the role of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) in driving improvements in plant operations, emphasizing the benefits of certified EMS like ISO 14001 in restoring neighborly relations and achieving environmental objectives. The report concludes by assessing the effectiveness of EMS in mitigating noise pollution and promoting sustainable practices.

Assessment

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report is aimed to identify the laws relating to the noise nuisance. There are two
meanings to the noise nuisance of which first is described in statutory law which is
Environmental Protection Act, Control of Pollution Act, 20005 and many other. The common
law definition of noise nuisance is same as statutory law but the slight difference lies in the
action taken. There are many defences available to the companies or person in order to escape
the liability of nuisance. Moreover this report will also cover the environmental management
system which helps in reducing the environmental impact and helps the company in framing the
environmental targets so that no or less harm is caused to the environment.

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................4
Case scenario...............................................................................................................................4
Principles of law which apply to issues, both legislative and case laws.....................................5
Defences open to Top turbine.....................................................................................................5
Environmental management system which would help drive improvements in the way plant is
operated.......................................................................................................................................6
Whether certified EMS help in restoring the neighbouring relations.........................................7
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Environment is the condition or the surrounding in which an animal, plants and human
beings lives and operates. In order to safeguard the environment from harmful effects,
environmental law is being made. It is a collection of laws, agreements, regulations and common
law which govern how human beings interact with the environment they live and operate in. The
main aim of this law is to protect the environment and also create such rules as to how people
may use the natural resources (Cai and Ye, 2020). Noise nuisance is normally treated as the
environmental health matter which is to be handled by the local council. This report shall cover
the case scenario where principles of law both legislative and case laws will be dealt, defences
available to the company and environmental management system which will help in driving
improvements and whether certified EMS can help in restoring neighbourly relations.
MAIN BODY
Case scenario
CHRA is a residents association which seeks to stop the Top Turbines (TT), a wind
turbine company which is a manufacturer of turbines and is making lives miserable of the
people. The turbines are used in constructing wind farm which produces renewable electricity.
The demand of the turbines have increased so it is necessary for the company to work 24 hours a
day for 7 days in week. 200 employees have been employed in the factory. The proceedings in
High Court is brought. The main issue between the parties is noise nuisance. CHRA alleged that
the noise coming from the factory causes adverse health issues and is disturbing and the may
cause loss of amenity to those people who occupy dwellings nearby. The evidence from the
experts shows that the local people are getting adversely affected by the noise which is created
by TT. The company Top Turbines concede that their activities do make noise. The company
explained that they were at distance from the residential properties and their activities have never
cause the problem until recently. The new residence have been built three years ago and they
informed the authorities that if dwellings were made, it would give rise to nuisance but the local
authority took no interest.
Issue raised-
 Whether the company Top Turbines causes noise nuisance and pollute the environment ?

 Whether the noise nuisance caused by the company adversely affects the health the of the
people living nearby.
Principles of law which apply to issues, both legislative and case laws.
Noise can be regarded as the statutory nuisance if any one of the following is done which
includes-
 Substantial and unreasonable interference with the enjoyment and use of home or the
other premises.
 Injures the health or likely to injure the health of the people (Abd Aziz and Yeon, 2019).
The statutory noise nuisance may not apply to noise which is caused by traffic or planes,
political demonstration, premises which are occupied by armed forces or the visiting forces.
The Environmental Protection Act of 1990 have borrowed the term nuisance and there
are many similarities of statutory nuisance with the common law nuisance. The main difference
between the two is that in common law nuisance, the action is taken by the person who suffers
and the action in statutory nuisance is taken by the person mentioned in Section 82 of the Act or
the local authority. The statutory law nuisance is generally based on the public health legislation
and to make something as statutory nuisance, it must effect the well being and health of the
people. Noise nuisance is covered in Part III of the Environmental Protection Act, 1990 and this
law requires the local council to investigate the complaints of the noise which comes from fixed
premises like factories, dwellings, shops, pubs, etc.
another statutory law for noise nuisance is Noise and Statutory Nuisance Act, 1993 which
extend its statutory nuisance provision to the law of Environmental Protection Act where it is
defined that a noise which is prejudicial to the health or the nuisance and is emitted or caused by
the vehicle, equipment or the machine in the street (Fang, Wang and Kleit, 2020).
Defences open to Top turbine
There many defences which can be used by the companies in order to prevent the liability
of noise nuisance which are discussed below-
Statutory authority- The body performing any statutory duty shall not be liable for the
act of nuisance until and unless the nuisance is caused negligently. There are many legislations
which have exclude the right to bring an action in the nuisance against any authority which carry
out the statutory function.

Time- An act which is being carried out for a long period of time may be an excuse to
claim the nuisance. The length of the time for which an activity is being carried out without any
complaint can be an evidence as to whether it is the nuisance at all in its context.
Act of person affected- If any person who is being affected by the nuisance have
negligently contributed to nuisance, then he/ she cannot bring the claim of nuisance.
Best practical means- When an abatement notice is served and a person is prosecuted for
the breach of abatement notice then it may be a defence to prove that the best practicable means
is being used to prevent the nuisance under the Control of Pollution Act of 2005.
Public interest- When an act is done in order to serve the public interest,it may not
constitute the noise and nuisance and if it constitutes the noise nuisance then no person can bring
the claim of nuisance against the party which have caused such noise (Maleki and Hüsing, 2018).
in this case, Top Turbines may claim the defence of public interest as the company is
engaged in constructing wind farms which produces renewable electricity. Also the company is
engaged in the manufacturing of turbines due to high demand and it has also notified the local
authority that the noise may be caused due to production so no residence must be built but the
local authority took no interest in their representation.
Environmental management system which would help drive improvements in the way plant is
operated
Environmental management system can be referred to as the system and the database
which integrates the processes and procedures for the training of personnel, summarising,
monitoring and reporting of the specialised environmental performance information to the
external and internal stakeholders of the company. This system is aimed to protect the public
safety and health by establishing such procedures in order to limit or eliminate the harmful
substance from entering into environment. It is a framework which helps the company to achieve
the environmental goals by consistent review, improvement and evaluation of the environmental
performance (Zhang, 2020).
There is an assumption that the consistent review and the evaluation will help in
identifying the opportunities for the implementation and improvement in the environmental
performance of the company. The Top Turbine company also install the environmental
management system so that it can achieve its environmental goals and work further to improve
its environmental performance by reviewing and evaluating the performance. The environmental

management system does not provide its own level of performance rather each company's
environmental management system is tailored with its own targets and objectives.
The basic Environmental management system includes the following-
 Review the environmental performance goals.
 Analyse the environmental impact and the legal requirement.
 Sets the environmental targets and objectives in order to reduce the impact on
environment and also comply with the legal requirements.
 Establish the programs to meet the environmental objectives and the targets.
 Monitor and measure the progress in attaining the objectives.
 Review the progress of EMS and make improvements (Eritja, 2020).
Environmental management system is an important tool which may be used by the
companies in order to make organisation pro active and and efficient so that it can control the
impact of environment and reduce its impact continuously. The installation of the Environmental
management system can help the company Top Turbines in making improvement in their
operation so that they can control the level of noise which comes during the manufacturing of the
turbines. Moreover, the company can get also make improvements in its existing system so that
it can also control the level of nuisance it creates which affect the neighbourhood relations and
their health as well. The environmental management system shall help the company in setting the
environmental objectives and also provide a framework with the help of which it can achieve the
said targets. This system will also open room to make improvements so that noise nuisance can
be eliminated and the company can work with environment friendly means.
Whether certified EMS help in restoring the neighbouring relations.
One of the certified environmental management system which is accepted internationally
is the ISO 14001 which certifies that a company is committed to reducing the impact of its
operations and product on the environment and also seeks to monitor and identify the ways in
which it can further reduce the impact. The company is registered as per the standard and it helps
in measuring, monitoring and evaluating the progress in the performance of environment both in
the areas where it is regulated and not regulated. The company Top Turbines may use ISO 14001
as the certified Environmental management system (Glicksman and et. al., 2019).
When the company Top Turbines installs the Environmental management system which
is certified, namely ISO 14001, it will be able to achieve the environmental objectives. There are

five stages of the Environmental management system which is defined by the ISO 14001
standard that will help the company Top Turbine in restoring the neighbour relations which is
discussed below- Commitment and policy- The top level management of the company becomes committed
to the environmental improvement and the company works to establish the
environmental policy of the company. This policy is the very foundation of EMS. Planning- In this stage, environmental aspects of the operations is identified which
includes air pollutants, noise or hazardous waste which creates negative impact on
environment and the people. After identification, it sets the objectives and targets which
is the overall objective of environmental goal. The last part of this involves an action plan
in order to meet the target. Implementation- Here the action plan is implemented using the necessary the resources.
It includes important component like employee training and the awareness for the
employees. Evaluation- In this stage, the organisation monitor its evaluation to see whether the
objective is achieved or not and if objectives are not achieved, the company takes
corrective actions to achieve them.
 Review- In this stage, the top level review the result of the evaluation to see whether
EMS is effectively working or not (Mitchell, Sheargold and Voon, 2017). By following
these steps, the company Top Turbines will work to restore its neighbour relations and
reduce the noise nuisance which prevails due to manufacturing of turbines.

CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report that environmental law plays a very important role
in protecting the environment and nature. The company Top Turbines is engaged in the
manufacturing of the turbines which causes noise nuisance and disturbs the neighbours living in
CHRA residence association. There are two laws of noise nuisance mentioned in statutory and
common law which provides that the noise can be regarded as the nuisance which involves
causing injury to the public health. There are many defences available to escape the liability of
noise nuisance of which Top Turbines can claim public interest. Moreover the environmental
management system can help company to improve its operations of plant so that it can emit less
noise by manufacturing. The ISO 14001 is the best certified EMS which can help company to
restore its neighbour relations and prevent the noise nuisance.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abd Aziz, B.A.S. and Yeon, A.L.B., 2019. Environmental Protection and the Bilateral
Investment Treaties of Malaysia and Netherlands: A Comparison. European Energy and
Environmental Law Review, 28(5).
Cai, W. and Ye, P., 2020. How does environmental regulation influence enterprises’ total factor
productivity? A quasi-natural experiment based on China’s new environmental
protection law. Journal of Cleaner Production, 276, p.124105.
Eritja, M.C. ed., 2020. The European Union and Global Environmental Protection:
Transforming Influence into Action. Routledge.
Fang, D., Wang, D. and Kleit, A.N., 2020. How a choice between emission trading and tax
schemes affects an environment-biased Environmental Protection Bureau's
discretion?. Science of The Total Environment, 736, p.139141.
Glicksman and et. al., 2019. Environmental Protection: Law and Policy. Aspen Publishers.
Maleki, H. and Hüsing, N., 2018. Current status, opportunities and challenges in catalytic and
photocatalytic applications of aerogels: Environmental protection aspects. Applied
Catalysis B: Environmental, 221, pp.530-555.
Mitchell, A.D., Sheargold, E. and Voon, T., 2017. Environmental Protection: Moderate
Safeguards and Novel Opportunities: The Evolution of Australian Policy on Trade and
Investment. In Regulatory Autonomy in International Economic Law. Edward Elgar
Publishing.
Zhang, Y., 2020. Research on Ecological Environmental Protection and Utilization of Water
Resource—Investigation and Data Analysis on Ecological Practice of Five Villages in
Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Gansu. Journal of Coastal Research, 115(SI),
pp.522-525.