Leaf Blower Ban Takes Effect Today

After months of debate and impassioned protests, Los Angeles’ controversial ban on using gasoline-powered leaf blowers in residential areas goes into effect today.

City street maintenance officials have set up a hotline at (800) 996-CITY for people to call to complain if they hear a leaf blower. The Los Angeles Police Department is encouraging people to call that number rather than one of the department’s stations, because officers are unlikely to put aside other duties to pursue renegade gardeners.

Department officials virtually implored people not to call 911 about leaf blowers. “It’s obvious that [leaf blower use] is not an emergency situation,” said LAPD Cmdr. Maurice Moore.

In fact, LAPD enforcement of the ordinance is likely to be spotty because officers must witness a leaf blower in action in order to issue the $270 tickets called for in the ordinance.

Initially, complaints will prompt the city to send warning letters to offending gardening companies and those who hire them. If a pattern of violations occurs, city officials say they will cite offenders.

In extreme cases, LAPD’s Moore said, those annoyed by blowers should call the operator and ask for a nonemergency number for a local police division.

“I don’t think [enforcement] is going to be difficult,” Moore said. “If someone runs a red light, we write a ticket. If we see a leaf blower violation, we write a ticket.”

The ordinance banning the use of gas-powered leaf blowers within 500 feet of homes was passed by the City Council late in 1996 and was scheduled to go into effect last July. But an escalating series of protests followed, catching City Hall politicians by surprise and drawing international attention.

Organized gardeners marched on City Hall clad in matching baseball caps and sweatshirts, decrying what they and their supporters characterize as an attack on the working poor.

Homeowners, weary of what they describe as the blowers’ chain saw-like roar, clamored for relief.

What ensued was a controversy variously portrayed as a battle between whites and Latinos, affluent Westsiders and the working poor, immigrants and the native-born, environmentalists and profit seekers.

The demonstrations reached a sobering level when a group of gardeners vowed to fast until death on the grounds of City Hall unless the mayor and the council took action to address their grievances. Last month, a compromise was reached when the council promised to help the gardeners obtain replacement machines, while voting to enforce the current ordinance by authorizing police to issue tickets to violators and their employers.

Leaf blower complaints have been on the wane since the ordinance burst into prominence last July, said Officer Maria Peppers of the LAPD noise enforcement team. Last summer, she said, the team received, at most, a couple of leaf blower-related calls a day. Because the ordinance was not yet being enforced, officers did not respond, she said.

“As people become aware of [the new ordinance], people naturally want to obey the law,” said Jack Allen, a retired Pacific Palisades attorney and activist with an antipollution community group.

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Gardeners, meanwhile, still contend that the ordinance will strip them of their livelihood, and plan additional protests as the ordinance takes effect.

“We are not going to back down,” said Alvaro Huerta, spokesman for Latin American Gardeners of Los Angeles, a group that staged last month’s protests.

The group is urging gardeners to use the blowers despite the ban. “We are going to resist the law because it’s unjust. . . . It is a harsh and unjust ban,” Huerta said.

Exactly who will violate the ban, and where, was unclear. After a candlelight vigil at City Hall on Thursday night, attended by about 75 protesters, Huerta’s group planned marches and a news conference today.

Huerta, a job counselor whose father was a gardener, said the group feels betrayed by the council after its members agreed to end the hunger strike on the condition that hearings would be held promptly to address the gardeners’ plight.

Although the council has held hearings on alternate technologies for leaf blowers, and DWP chief S. David Freeman has offered to try to allocate $1 million for development of new devices, Huerta says these efforts are too little, too late.

He says gardeners should be able to continue using the leaf blowers until better alternatives are available.

The ban is part of a “series of attacks against the Latino immigrant. All they want to do is work, and [the City Council] is creating this hostility,” Huerta said.

Those who fought to get the leaf blower law enforced, however, take a different view. “Whatever I say will reflect the joy in my community that this is finally going to take effect,” said Allen, the Pacific Palisades activist. “This turns a big corner. . . . The neighborhoods will be quieter, they won’t be as dusty.”