Arizona Green Industry Fighting Blower Ban Bill

According to Robin Pendergrast, a power equipment industry representative from International Marketing Exchange Inc., McHenry, Ill., and Echo Incorporated, Lake Zurich, Ill., the blower ban is a result of Arizona Governor Jane Dee Hull’s Brown Cloud Summit, which is aimed at reducing the brown cloud of carbon particles and nitrogen dioxide gas that creates a visible haze in the state. While pollution in Arizona may need reduced, Pendergrast and other green industry lobbyists feel the lawn and landscape industry is being unfairly targeted as the Arizona legislature has made the ban of blowers a top priority for reducing the brown cloud.

The industry’s feeling of unfairness comes not only from the fact that equipment vital to the efficiency of landscape maintenance is being targeted, but also from the fact that the equipment targeted accounts for less than 1 percent of the state’s pollution as published in an August 2000 Arizona Department of Environmental Quality report. Linda Remick, marketing communications for A to Z Equipment, Phoenix, Ariz., said that the report showed that lawn and garden equipment as a whole accounted for 1 percent of the state’s pollution and that only one-thirteenth of that 1 percent was attributed to leaf blowers.

“We feel like we’re being singled out because [the legislature doesn’t] think we’re any constituency that matters,” said Remick.

Pendergrast said that of the three items commonly cited for bans of power equipment - particulate matter, emissions and noise - the bill is focusing on the airborne particulate matter. That strikes a chord with him, as other similar equipment is not targeted. "The bill doesn’t talk about electric or walk-behind leaf blowers that do the same thing, or lawnmowers, and this is the fallacy of the whole thing,” he exclaimed.

FIGHTING FOR THE INDUSTRY. To combat the government’s target on the lawn and landscape industry, industry leaders have organized an open public meeting to develop a plan of action to fight the passing of Arizona HB 2109. Organized by Pendergrast, Remick and other industry representatives, the meeting will be held from 4 to 6 p.m., Tues., Jan. 16, 2001, at the Quality Inn Suites, 3101 North 32nd Street, Phoenix, Ariz.

Meeting speakers include lobbyists from the Arizona Landscape Contractors Association, the Arizona Nursery Association and the National Federation of Small Business. Pendergrast and Remick expect lawn and landscape professionals, equipment dealers, association members and other small business groups to attend. Additionally, press coverage is expected, which displays the seriousness of the industry’s efforts to fight the proposed legislation.

“We’re doing a good thing coalescing and doing sort of an ad hoc thing with this,” explained Remick. “My feeling is that the people who keep bringing this bill up think of us as very ineffective and very unorganized. They don’t think of it as an industry per say with any kind of real power.”

The proposed law, which will soon go to a committee for the revision and approval process, reads as follows:

Remick said that a similar bill was considered last year that went to four committees. However, it never made its way out of the Environmental Committee. What worries Remick this year is that the Environmental Committee member who stopped the bill last year is a co-sponsor of the bill this year. Additional concern surrounds the fact that there is a new chairman of the Environmental Committee, and green industry representatives are unsure of that chair’s stand on the issue of leaf blower bans.

For more information about the Jan. 16 meeting call Linda Remick at 602/955-5884, Darrin Green at 623/979-8651 or Mike Hudson at 480/545-6600.

For more information on the Arizona Brown Cloud Summit click here: www.adeq.state.az.us/environ/air/browncloud.