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Mario Bahona, left, Jorge Torres and Raul Martinez team up to blow away debris at Kensington Place apartments. |
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The ban on gas-powered leaf blowers instituted 14 years ago in Berkeley, Calif., continues to get mixed reviews in that West Coast college town.
“Everybody simply adapted to the blower ban, and they used the electric ones,” said Janis Mitchell, owner of Gordon Commercial Properties in Berkeley. The company maintains 16 apartment complexes.
“People in the city feel very strongly about air pollution and noise pollution,” she said.
As Chapel Hill leaders consider a similar measure, many local landscapers and groundskeepers already are panning the idea, saying it’s a heavy-handed intrusion that would compound their workload.
They have sympathizers in California, where nearly 30 cities and towns have enacted bans or severe restrictions on leaf blowers.
Douglas McDonald, senior landscaping and gardening supervisor for Berkeley’s parks and recreation department, said the ban went too far and has had unintended consequences.
The department had to hire several more groundskeepers to make up for the lost efficiency of leaf blowers, he said.
Many have missed work and received worker’s compensation due to repetitive motion injuries McDonald linked to increased sweeping and raking duties.
“The blowers are a labor-saving device,” he said. “For our staff, it’s like having our hands tied, so it’s frustrating if you’re an individual who wants to do quality work. There’s this acceptance that things won’t look as nice, as clean, as they could be.”
McDonald’s department suggested an alternative proposal that would have restricted blower use during early-morning and evening hours and would have required running the engines as low as possible.
“It still all got shot down,” McDonald said.
Chapel Hill Councilman Cam Hill caused a stir last month when he proposed a ban in town, drawing support from those who view it as a progressive move.
Hill cited the fact that blowers often just spread dust and debris around, are noisy and create pollution. Small engines like the ones used in blowers are responsible for 10 percent of the nation’s hydrocarbon emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Orangepolitics.org, an online forum for local issues, has hummed with discussion of the matter, with many in support, including Carrboro Alderman Mark Chilton and former Chapel Hill Councilman Joe Capowski.
Former Councilman Joe Herzenberg also said he favors a ban at a recent council meeting.
But the move is being criticized by those, like McDonald, who work daily with lawn equipment.
“It would kill me,” said Wayne Eubanks, owner of Chapel Hill-based Eubanks Landscaping for 26 years.
“I’d probably get out of the business or just say the hell with Chapel Hill. One backpack blower equals several men. I’d like for those that support this to get out there and work with me half a day. It wouldn’t take long to realize they’re idiots.”
Kirk Pelland, UNC’s grounds director, said it would be nearly impossible to keep the 850-acre campus in order if the ban passed. It’s not just size that sets the university apart, Pelland said.
Workers often do lawn work early in the morning, which is fine on campus but would be nettlesome in a neighborhood, he said.
“Clearly the university has a different facility to maintain than the average homeowner,” he said. “We’re really dealing with a different kind of maintenance.”
Pelland and others have argued that self-policing efforts and new manufacturer regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency make a ban unnecessary.
The university already uses a hybrid engine for its string-trimmers and edgers made by Stihl Power Tools.
Small engines typically are either two-cycle, which use an oil-gas mix and create the most air pollution, or four-cycle, which is cleaner and keeps gas and oil separate.
The hybrid uses an oil-gas mix but works like a four-cycle engine.
“It reduces emissions and is a lot less noisy,” Pelland said.
As several landscapers and a Stihl representative pointed out at a Sept. 27 meeting, the EPA already is taking steps to require manufacturers to reduce noise and air pollution from small engines.
A regulation coming into effect next year will reduce hydrocarbon emissions from small engines by 70 percent, according to the EPA.
“Uncontrolled, these engines are pretty bad,” said Karl Simon of the office of transportation and air quality at the EPA.
“We do have standards in place for these engines, which is the good news. And there’s a fair amount of work being done in the industry and in California to continue reducing emissions.”
But he would neither encourage nor discourage local governments from making their own regulations.
“I think it’s up to each jurisdiction to find what works for them,” Simon said.
Town staff members are doing that right now.
Hill has said that he’s open to ideas that fall short of an outright ban, and that he just wanted to spark a community discussion.
The leaf-blower issue is not slated to return to the council for at least a month, but the discussion is likely to continue.
“We were talking about it just now,” Eubanks said when reached by phone. “Everybody’s been talking about it.”