CAYCE, S.C. — An electronic dance music festival called Hidden City Music is coming to the Historic Columbia Speedway in less than three weeks. The festival came to town last year but not without noise complaints from surrounding neighborhoods. In a Cayce City Council meeting Tuesday, the council approved fireworks for the event this year.
Cromer showed up to the meeting in hopes of getting the Cayce Council to vote against fireworks at this year's festival.
"You see fireworks are 145 decibels, if you look on the next page I have given you, 115 decibels is recommended for a maximum of 30 seconds before you start having damage to your ears," Cromer explained.
However, despite his request, the Cayce Council voted to approve the fireworks. Organizer Shelby Judd, says the music festival may have caused some irritation last year, but they are hoping to make things better at their latest event in the next two weeks.
"One thing we ran into last year is that the actual noise ordinance of the city is pretty subjective and so that's where I think the disconnect happened between us and the city," Judd stated. "This year we've proposed an actual objective plan based on decibel ratings, and shall it get approved, we'll have people on our staff going through the different areas that got affected and taking readings to make sure we're not exceeding that at any time. If we are, they will relay that back to us so we can turn the music down."
The festival will be in town on April 22, and organizers say residents should be getting firework warnings on their doors in the next week or so.