City Council to Reconsider Leaf Blower Ban

Once again, in caving in on the matter of the leaf blower ban (July 8), the Los Angeles City Council has demonstrated its lack of leadership and resolve. As a source of blown contaminants and of noise and air pollution, there is no question that leaf blowers are a widespread annoyance to the council’s constituents all over the city.

Instead of standing by the hard-fought effort finally achieved to do something about these dirt-blowing horrors, the council has, with its customary civic bravery, put off action and bowed instead to the perpetrators of the problem. With this approach, problems will never be solved, merely stacked up for future equivocation.

WILLIAM N. McNAIRN

Palos Verdes Estates

* * Whatever happened to the good old broom and the rake? The issue should be how much more time would it take to use these simple and environmentally correct implements than to “sweep” with a leaf blower. I maintain that most tasks could be swept away as readily with the former as with the latter.

While sympathy abounds for the gardeners, has anyone considered the harm done to their hearing, and to their lungs and eyes, from the exhaust of gasoline-powered leaf blowers?

JEFF DROBMAN

Westlake Village

* * My gardener, a gentleman from Mexico who has been with me for a long time, changed to an electric blower and a 100-foot extension cord on July 1 in order to comply with the new regulations. He plugs it into my Christmas lights outlet in front and my barbecue outlet in back with my permission and complete concurrence. He did my yard in the usual length of time and just as neatly on his last visit, July 3.

NORMAN HENRY

Northridge

* * Noise pollution is not the most serious problem with gas-powered leaf blowers. It is air pollution. A 3.5 horsepower gas mower or leaf blower can emit the same amount of volatile organic compounds (key precursors to smog) in an hour as a new car driven 340 miles.

Bill Boyarsky’s (July 7) inference that this act was passed because a few Westsiders didn’t like the noise levels shows his ignorance about what these blowers are doing to our air quality and is an insult to former Councilman Marvin Braude’s attempts to save L.A.’s environment.

BRETT WALKER

Marina del Rey

* * Before Braude, we had a happy gardener--a cigarette in one hand, a leaf blower in the other.

ELEANOR SWEET

Tarzana