Leaf Blower Madness

[UPDATE June 25, 2024: PATCH.com reports, "A ban on sales of gas-powered leaf blowers within Montgomery County will take effect July 1, 2024, setting the stage for a complete prohibition on the equipment’s use to be implemented next year. The law, approved by the County Council in 2022, is considered a noise ordinance and an environmental protection measure. The ban includes all handheld, backpack and walk-behind gas-powered leaf removal equipment. Following the sales prohibition, a ban on use of the equipment will become effective July 1, 2025."]

SL comments: In the 1960s, municipal landscape crews used rakes and tarps. Gathering fallen leaves was a good workout. Rakes and tarps might now be a better things to buy than electric leaf blowers, with their consumption of energy and limited battery life.

[UPDATE Jan. 14, 2022: "We have a bill [which] will do that [ban blowers]." – An email from the office of County Executive Marc Elrich in response to my query about the topic. Good news!]

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In the fall of 2021, eight men with leaf blowers marched in a line, blowing leaves across the huge common lawns of Quail Halley HOA toward the curb for pickup. Roarrrrr!!!, unceasingly, hour after hour.

On one level, this is just suburban lawn care using the latest and greatest technology: the leaf blower. But there is another point of view: Washington, D.C. has banned leaf blowers. Why hasn't Montgomery County, Maryland?

The landscape companies that thrive over the next decade will be the ones that act ahead of the legal strictures. They will respond to residents' desire to walk out onto a more sustainable and naturalistic landscape, leaving mowed grass (acres of monochromatic, energy-intensive, neocolonial lawns) mostly behind as a thing of the past. We need landscape companies who know how to create and maintain a meadow; work with an arborist on an urban forestry plan; and transform a drainage basin into a pond habitat that can support frogs and fish. This change will require not laying off your workers, but rather training them in different skills.

For starters, take a simple step. Retire the leaf blowers. Purchase metal rakes and canvas (not plastic) tarps for hauling leaves, as has been done for centuries in public parks. Let the groundskeepers get strong by raking and hauling, rather than become deaf and asthmatic by using leaf blowers. Raking leaves in autumn is a good workout for the whole body, as I learned at six years old. (Then jump into the pile!) Use a push broom to clean the sidewalk.

Please avoid battery-operated blowers. They add to the demand for yet more electricity; they disrupt the wildlife just the same; they inflate the cost of removing leaves; to name a few problems. Use simple hand tools: the rake, the tarp, the push-broom.

Consider a recent letter to the editor in the Washington Post (Jan. 3, 2022) and an article in Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club (Dec. 5, 2021).

First, excerpts from the letter by Potomac resident John W. Dix: "Gasoline-powered leaf blowers create an air velocity of nearly 200 miles an hour. [They are] weapons. ... Montgomery County governance's timid response to the environmental havoc that leaf blowers are doing to insects, reptiles, birds, and other wild life shows the undue influence that community associations have ... there are risks to workers' health from hearing loss ... and inhaling aerosols that a face mask may not filter. ... It is environmental disregard in the name of tidiness."

Here's the link to the Sierra article by Michael Shapiro, "California Bill Takes Aim at Scourge of Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers: We don’t need to sacrifice our mental and physical health to blow leaves." An excerpt: "At jackhammer-like noise levels that can exceed 100 decibels, leaf blowers damage the hearing of those who use them. The noise triggers headaches; the fumes can cause asthmatic reactions a block away. The sound makes it harder for blind people to get around safely, as they rely on hearing cars and other potential hazards. And for the increasing number of people working at home, the blaring of leaf blowers makes it hard to focus on work tasks or engage in Zoom meetings.

"But it’s the outsize level of polluting emissions that has led California to pass a bill that will by 2024 halt the sale of most gas-powered leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and other small off-road engines (aptly known as SOREs). The two-stroke engine employed by leaf blowers combines gas and oil to give the machine more power. This makes it light enough to carry, but two-strokes spit out as much as a third of this fuel mix as unburned aerosol," creating smog and warming the planet.

Elections–for county councilor, for county executive–are just around the corner. Let a new season of sustainability in Montgomery County, Maryland begin.

Read all of the Chapters of "Living on Cuckoo Court" at tinyurl.com/CuckooCourt. Read about condo and HOA "dysfunction, corruption, and abuse" all across America at IndependentAmericanCommunities.com.