Curbing Noise of Leaf Blowers

Irvine has set its sights on the ozone layer, dreamed of monorails and subsidized housing, and paid attention to the plants that developers place around their commercial sites. It has banned chemicals and quarreled with noise in the skies overhead.

It should come as no surprise, then, that after drawing national attention, this planned community would engage in a consummate exercise in social engineering. It has passed an ordinance that restricts noise levels on the city’s corps of 6,000 leaf-blowers.

Those noisy motorized gardening tools have proven to be a nuisance in other communities too.

About 60 California cities now have laws restricting hours that leaf blowers may be used. These include Irvine’s neighbors Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Laguna Beach.

Eight cities in the state have gone a step further to actually ban the machines outright. Anyone who has had the quiet silence of a Saturday afternoon interrupted by the sudden acceleration of a leaf-blower’s motor will understand a city’s concern.

Irvine, after much discussion, became the second city in the nation to require that the machines meet acceptable decibel standards.

The ordinance prohibits the use of blowers from operating within 10 feet of residences, and limits on their use to between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays, and 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Saturdays. So far so good.

The problem is how deep into its pockets Irvine is prepared to go to enforce this ordinance.

The City Council is spending $70,000 to take a number of steps.

It is hiring a part-time inspector to work at an outdoor test station as well as purchase an instructional videotape and print brochures in five languages that will be sent to local landscaping and gardening services to notify them of the new law. But this is going a little far.

After all, how many languages does a city really need to convey the idea that something’s too loud?