Some Cities Tire of the Whine, Move to Ban Leaf Blowers

Like invading gardeners from another planet, they have become a familiar sight on suburban streets in Southern California and around the country.

Masked men with motorized backpacks move like moon walkers, wielding rubberized mechanical arms that blast leaves and debris into the street and across the next guy’s front yard.

The packs’ high-pitched whine can be as deafening as a rocket launch--so loud that operators usually protect themselves with bulky headsets.

In the early morning, their rip-snorting roar can send residents scrambling from their beds to slam windows.

These machines are known as leaf blowers or air brooms. And recently, the gardening contraptions have kicked up a lot of racket and a storm of controversy in several North County communities.

“They’re just a selfish piece of equipment, period,” Del Mar Mayor Brooke Eisenberg said. “You might accomplish something on one person’s property. But the impact blows into the air to affect everyone else.”

In July, the Del Mar City Council passed an ordinance banning the machines’ use within city limits, branding them a public nuisance.

This week, the Solana Beach City Council began discussions on whether to impose a ban on the gadgets or merely restrict the hours of their use.

Rancho Santa Fe officials are considering a similar ban for early next year.

In recent years, complaints against the blowers have risen like the clouds of leaves and dust they stir up. In some cases, the machines have let loose a hail of airborne dust and pollen, aggravating sinus problems, residents say, as well as clouding windows and gumming up computer keyboards. The machines have also propelled rocks into nearby cars, dinging them. And, when directed into the street, the debris in their path has clogged storm drains in several neighborhoods.

“These things are different from lawn mowers,” Eisenberg said. “They raise dust and pollutants and things you don’t even want to think about that cover the neighborhood like a dirty blanket.

“And the noise drives people absolutely crazy.”

With its ban, Del Mar joined a growing list of Southern California cities that have recently pulled the plug on leaf-blower use. The new laws have been the grass-roots response when one man’s leaf quandary becomes a major neighborhood headache.

After Beverly Hills enacted the first leaf-blower ban in 1978, other cities, including West Hollywood, Hermosa Beach, Lomita, Pasadena and Palos Verdes Estates, followed with ordinances either banning or restricting their use, industry officials say.

Several other cities, including Irvine and Claremont, are considering similar ordinances. And it was only after a furious $100,000 lobbying effort that gardening groups dodged a ban in Los Angeles.

In San Marino, in the San Gabriel Valley, residents in 1987 voted down a leaf-blower ban, saying the machines helped to keep their community beautiful.

“In the past few years, we’ve dealt with 15 municipalities who have considered banning leaf blowers,” said Roy Imazu, a lobbyist for the Southern California Gardeners Federation.

“In most of those cases, the cities have decided to take a less severe course of merely restricting their use during certain hours. And some have imposed no restrictions at all. So we’ve felt like we’ve won some battles.”

Professional gardeners say leaf blowers save time and money and have gotten a bad rap from jumpy neighborhood groups. One spokesman of a gardeners’ association said bans are tantamount to ‘decapitation as a cure for dandruff.”

If used properly, they say, the machines are as safe and trouble-free as any other garden tool. And, despite recent government studies that show the machine contributes to smog, they cause no more pollution than the average lawn mower, Imazu said.

“The argument is used that they cause all this pollution,” he said. “The thing runs on gas, so it’s going to pollute a little. But so do lawn mowers and chain saws, and you don’t hear too many people crying about them .”

Still, leaf-blower use remains a major battle for gardeners throughout Southern California.

“We’ve been fighting this bad publicity for years,” said Bill Kondo, executive secretary of the 3,700-member gardeners federation. “We’ve put the word out to our members about saner ways to use these blowers. But not every gardener in Southern California is a member of our group. And many tell us to mind our own business.”

He said many large gardening companies hire workers who are unaware of bans. “A lot of these people buy a few rakes and a blower, and they go into the gardening business without learning the rules,” Kondo said.

“That’s why some cities are considering laws to license gardeners, to get away from this type of behavior. The solution to this problem is education.”

Bill Chambers, vice president of marketing for The Green Machine, a Long Beach company that markets several varieties of leaf blowers, said the machines became popular in California during the drought-stricken mid-1970s as a way to clear debris without wasting water.

Today, there are dozens of leaf-blower manufacturers and almost a million in use nationwide, he said. The Green Machine makes a heavy-duty model for professionals and a smaller, hand-held version for homeowners that sells for about $125.

The machines are noisy, he acknowledged, adding that gardeners usually wear headsets to dull the noise, as well as a mask to guard against airborne dust.

In recent years, manufacturers have tried to reduce the noise and to alert consumers to ways to lessen their impact, such as operating at less than full throttle for some jobs and sprinkling water to cut down on dust.

Still, complaints persist--most often in condominium developments and smaller communities where residents stay home during the day.

“Garbage trucks make noise, too,” he said. “But they know that the trash has got to be picked up so they ignore the racket. It’s not that way with leaf blowers.

“It’s all in the head of the user. These things weren’t intended to blow your troubles into your neighbor’s yard. They were meant as a home tool. But you don’t have to blast them full throttle, like you don’t have to spin the wheels on your car.”

Several local gardeners said that, if the trend to ban the leaf blowers continues, gardening costs will skyrocket.

“I know these things are a pain in the rear, that high-pitched whine even bothers me when I’m trying to get work done at home,” said Steven Smith, an Escondido landscaper.

“But the simple fact is that these things are cost-effective. You get the job done faster with them. And the end result just doesn’t look as nice without them. So what’s the alternative? The price you pay for quiet in your neighborhood is a higher charge for gardening.”

The leaf-blower issue came up again last month, when Bret Black and his workers from Ponderosa Landscape began a three-year, $4-million grounds-keeping job on several off-base Navy housing projects.

“Navy inspectors saw our guys whip these leaf blowers out of our trucks the first day, and they jumped on our case,” said the Solana Beach businessman. “They said the blowers were out.”

Because of an oversight, however, the Navy had neglected to include an anti-leaf-blower clause in the contract. “So I told them, ‘We don’t use the blowers, it’s going to cost you another $75,000 a year for the job, it’s that simple.’

“So they backed off with the understanding that we use them on a restricted basis, mostly when other people aren’t around.”

Not every city has jumped on the anti-leaf-blower bandwagon. Some, such as San Diego and Carlsbad, say the problem can be handled through existing noise-control laws.

A little common sense--and sometimes asking neighbors to mitigate their own arguments--has alleviated the need for another law, they say.

But Brooke Eisenberg says the ordinance--and its fine of up to $100--has made Del Mar a quieter place.

“In small residential communities, I think it pays to be concerned with the quality of life,” she said. “Anyway, there are other ways to get rid of pine needles and loose leaves in your yard. It just requires a different kind of energy, like getting out and doing things the old-fashioned way.