Living near a bar, restaurant, or cantina in the center of Merida is a constant torture, due to different factors among which the noise caused by their activities predominates, considered Luis Hector Esqueda Huerta, of the local group Hagamos Ruido Contra el Ruido (Let’s Make Noise Against Noise).
The neighbor of this zone considered as “Mixed” for the municipality, but “commercial and industrial” for the decibels, mentioned that there are different establishments of this type, which violate the Reglamento de Protección al Ambiente y del Equilibrio Ecológico del Municipio de Mérida, affecting dozens of people who live in the surrounding area.
One of the latest cases, he said, is the “Catrín” restaurant, located on 47th Street at 54th and 52nd, where daily the parties on its terrace exceed the levels permitted by the aforementioned legal framework, of 68 decibels during the day and 65 decibels at night.
The situation has occurred throughout the month of December, with records of up to 88.9 decibels at 2:41 am.
“We are not opposed to having businesses, but that the businesses do not affect our lives, because the affectation is all day long, there are many businesses that start with live music from 1 o’clock in the afternoon and those of us who work at home, the children who study here in the afternoon or those who want to sleep early, all that is an affectation,” he assured.
Esqueda Huerta added that the problems caused by noise not only affect the neighbors, but in the long run the people who work in such an environment have irreversible hearing problems, since it is not advisable to expose themselves for so long to such high decibels.
He explained that the situation has already been exposed to the municipality on different occasions and they even created a Facebook page to publish the complaints, but the responses from the municipality are late and weeks go by before an inspector arrives.
They have also called the Municipal Police, but the establishments only lower the volume when the uniformed officers are present and raise it again as soon as they leave.
Because of the above, and because the “Catrín” restaurant is located on the street where part of the Mérida Tourist-Gastronomic Corridor is to be built, the downtown neighbor called on the municipal and state authorities involved in this project to guarantee that the new vocation they plan to give to Calle 60 and Calle 47 will not be to the detriment of the families who live in the area.
Finally, he insisted that the authorities must enforce the existing law, which contemplates sanctions such as fines, temporary suspensions and even closures for those who do not respect the maximum noise level in the center of the city.
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