Being a good neighbor means keeping noise to a minimum. And when you are the largest mining operation in the Bahamas, you bring in a partner like GeoSonics/Vibra-Tech to help you understand the situation and find a solution.
Bahama Rock, the largest mining operation in the vicinity of Freeport, Bahamas, has been mining aggregate resources for many years. Community relations efforts in neighborhoods adjacent to the mining identified noise levels as an issue that could potentially affect the community. Efforts to monitor the noise had to take into account multiple days of operations, weekends, noise from the community, and the port itself. Compounding the noise evaluation was the fact that the neighborhoods and mining operation are directly under the flight path into Freeport International Airport. Bahama Rock needed a comprehensive evaluation of community noise. With blasting operations already monitored by GeoSonics/Vibra-Tech’s Re:mote seismograph system, an expansion of the technology into noise monitoring was the solution. By installing three Re:mote sound level meters in the adjacent community, noise was measured over multiple 24-hour periods. This type of monitoring alleviated the need for portable units to monitor short-term noise and allowed a full-community evaluation to be performed. Combining noise measurements and noise modeling allowed Bahama Rock to evaluate noise with a greater focus on their neighbors.