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Despite pact, amphitheater cranks up sound

Despite an agreement to turn down the volume, Saturday's Alan Jackson concert seemed to flout the pact's intent.

By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER
Published December 9, 2005

TAMPA - Saturday night's Alan Jackson show cranked up the honky tonk way past noise limits at the Ford Amphitheatre, and there wasn't anything Hillsborough County could do about it.

An inability to enforce its own noise rules came two weeks after commissioners agreed to stop citing Clear Channel Entertainment for a year to give it time to muffle concert noise.

"It was one of the loudest concerts I've heard yet," said Edward Schroering, whose Temple Terrace home is two miles away from the venue. "It seems like Clear Channel knows they can't be cited. They have this free hand to turn it up."

Schroering was one of 13 nearby homeowners to complain to the Environmental Protection Commission, the county's enforcer of noise rules, about the country music concert.

They weren't imagining things.

EPC workers recorded sound levels at 23 and 26 decibels higher than allowed. If the volume is turned up by 10 decibels, it sounds twice as loud.

It was such an extreme violation that Rick Garrity, the agency's executive director, wrote a letter this week to Clear Channel officials in Atlanta seeking explanations.

"The number of complaints indicates to us that something went wrong," Garrity wrote to G. Wilson Rogers, a top company executive. "Your response to this letter should indicate what specific actions (Clear Channel) will take to prevent a recurrence."

Rogers didn't return phone calls to his Atlanta office. But he sent an e-mail back to Garrity promising quick action.

"I'm looking into what went wrong," Rogers told Garrity. "We will be very proactive in addressing."

Rogers can afford to be vague because there's not much the county can require Clear Channel to do, at least until next December.

Commissioners voted 6-1 on Nov. 17 to halt the county's lawsuit against the company for the amphitheater's repeated violations of noise rules. In exchange, Clear Channel agreed to build a $2.5-million sound-absorbing wall, lower the height of lawn speakers, and install sound-limiting electronic devices on speakers.

But commissioners gave Clear Channel a year to make these fixes. In the meantime, the county can only listen to violations.

"This is what I was concerned about," said Commissioner Kathy Castor, the lone dissenting vote. "To give Clear Channel a year to continually violate the law isn't right for the residents who live there. I'm disappointed it turned out this way."

Commissioner Mark Sharpe - who approved waiving enforcement along with Brian Blair, Ken Hagan, Jim Norman, Tom Scott and Ronda Storms - said the agreement is still better than being in court.

"But I'm certainly disappointed to hear that after this agreement was approved, the noise levels are back up," he said. "I want to understand what happened and why."

EPC attorney Rick Tschantz said he still believes that the agreement is a good one.

For instance, Clear Channel officials agreed to provide data from inside the amphitheater about noise levels, which they refused to do before. They also agreed to have people in nearby neighborhoods measuring noise levels during concerts and to call the sound engineers during concerts if violations are recorded.

But the agreement requires only that someone inform the sound engineers of violations. It doesn't require anyone to turn the music down.

"Each band has its own sound engineer," Tschantz said. "That person will have a Clear Channel guy looking over his shoulder in the sound booth, but, no, he can't get the engineer to turn down the music. That's something they wouldn't agree to do because it would limit the type of acts they could book."

Tschantz said he will await the data that Channel Clear Channel is required to provide the EPC about noise levels. If the data isn't provided, then the county can cancel the agreement.

But there's little reason why Clear Channel wouldn't provide this data. Though the agreement states that the sound shouldn't exceed 102 decibels inside the amphitheatre amphitheater , that is only a "target." Even if the data shows concert noise regularly exceeded that level, Clear Channel would still be obeying the agreement as long as it turns over the data.

Tschantz said he was disappointed that the first major concert after the agreement recorded so many violations. Concerts have regularly exceeded county noise limits over the summer and fall, but none has measured levels as high as that of the Alan Jackson performance, according to EPC records.

"They were doing something to keep it quiet," Tschantz said. "Whatever they were doing, why didn't they keep doing it?"

Michael Van Sickler can be reached at 813 226-3402 or mvansickler@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 9, 2005, 01:18:14]