prolonged disturbances (including car radios and boom boxes) that were within 100 feet of their person.

Last week, Community looked at the pressing issue of noise pollution on the Island in the form of such major sound irritants as increased automobile traffic and illegally souped-up motorbikes. But the problem, in these increasingly noisier "Isles of Rest,'' encompasses a much wider sphere of sources, extending as it does to both the skies above Bermuda (low-flying helicopter tours) and the sea (power boats, jet skis). This week, Community examines these additional questions -- plus a few more annoyances that disturb the peace on land.

It's the kind of sharing that most people don't appreciate: a car creeps obliviously down pedestrian-clogged Front Street or any other thoroughfare in Bermuda, the steady, chest-thumping beat of some rap or pop song blaring through its open windows, forcing passersby to take in the "music'' whether they want to or not.

The "sharing,'' moreover, is also going on in Bermuda's various parks and sports fields, where pounding open-air concerts that go on until the wee hours of the morning are increasingly fraying the nerves and tempers of the Island's homeowners, most of whom are powerless to do anything about them until after the damage is done.

"It was awful,'' one of several Pembroke residents who is prosecuting the organisers of a recent all-night concert in Bernard Park told Community. "I couldn't even hear the television over the sound of the music.'' St. George's resident Miss Dulcie Roe, who objected to a notoriously noisy soca concert at Penno's Wharf last year, was equally perturbed by the clamour in her neighbourhood.

"The noise is terrible,'' she said of the event at the time. "It rattles everything, and it goes on and on forever.'' Miss Roe, who was ultimately unable to keep the concert from going ahead, summed up the frustrations of many a resident when she told The Gazette : "I'm very angry about it,'' but "I'm a voice crying in the wilderness.'' Currently, of course, the noise-weary resident has a number of legal options that he or she can put to use -- former Environment Minister the Hon. Ann Cartwright DeCouto, for example, had a bill passed during her time in Cabinet that allows people to lodge a 24-hour complaint over any prolonged disturbance (including car horns and boom boxes) that occurs within 100 feet of their person, augmenting some higher-penalty legislation that prohibits such disturbances after midnight -- but these laws, as tough-sounding as they are, are widely regarded as having little or no bite, since very few residents are aware of their existence, and the Police Service rarely enforces them unless a formal complaint has been made.

"When was the last time you heard of anyone being stopped for a noisy cycle?'' Royal Gazette Editor Mr. David L. White, who himself opposed the St.

George's soca concert last year, has editorialised about a separate law that prohibits motorbikes from emitting noises over 93 decibels. "We don't seem to do that anymore and the noise grows.'' Added Mrs. Estlyn Harvey of the Environmental Health Office last week: "We have many noise pollution problems in Bermuda, but they rarely get dealt with beyond barking dogs or the occasional noisy party. We just don't have the mechanisms under the Public Health Act to handle them.'' If that is true, as Mrs. Harvey complains, of land-based sound annoyances, then there is almost no legal or social imperative among Bermudian authorities to deal with noise that emanates from the air or on the sea.

Although, for instance, The Royal Gazette 's Letters to the Editor page has been rife in past months with correspondence that complains of Bermuda Helicopters Ltd.'s frequently scheduled chopper tours of the Island, there's been little response if any from the Ministry of Transport -- just as there's been no reaction from Marine and Ports, a division of the Ministry, over the loud and increasing number of watercraft that reportedly plagues the residents of homes that are by the sea.

On the whole, in fact, there would seem in the official silence over the such matters to be a great deal of shoulder-shrugging on the subject of noise in general, as one resident in the Sunnyside Park area of Southampton found when he complained about a recent beach party that left Horseshoe Bay Beach strewn with bottles and broken glass and neighbourhood residents up until as late as 5 a.m.

"We saw no problems,'' was the response of assistant Parks director Mr.

William Cook, who nonetheless acknowledged that alcohol had been sold at the site illegally. "We did see it sold there,'' he told The Royal Gazette , "but we couldn't stop it without causing an incident.'' According to the Pembroke resident who is prosecuting the Bernard Park organisers, moreover, the Police sergeant who is putting the case together reportedly revealed that Officers who were policing the concert on the night in question chose to ignore its violations on the grounds that "something might have happened'' -- an attitude (or cold reality) that is consequently prompting many residents to wonder if Bermuda is maybe giving way to anarchy.

"How can Government be mixed up in that?'' the resident of Sunnyside Park asked of policies that clearly appease a small segment of the population but may be harmful to society as a whole.

"There were dozens of beer bottles (on Horseshoe Bay Beach) and by 7 a.m. the tourists were down on the beach taking photographs. We have visitors who come to Bermuda for this beach.'' THE ART OF NOISE -- On water and on land there are a host of actvities which can disturb the peace of our Island home.