Is It a Solution, or Is Mr. Wizard Blowin’ Hot Air?

The flags of City Hall South were hanging limp at half-staff, leading me to think about the late Congressman Sonny Bono. A giant menorah stood unlit near the steps. A large mechanical crane, a “cherry picker,” lifted a worker from tree to tree to remove Christmas lights.

This is the setting for what, depending on one’s perspective, is either a base camp for the latest class struggle to divide Los Angeles or a sadly misguided exercise in political theater. Perhaps 40 men, women and children, all but a few conversing in Spanish, had gathered in a show of solidarity for 10 men who have been engaged in a hunger strike for six days to protest L.A.’s new leaf-blower law that they say will cripple their ability to support their families.

And into this gathering strode a curiosity in the form of a tall, fiftyish white man wearing a blue suit, necktie and tasseled loafers. He handed me a business card identifying himself as Douglas C. Kruse, President and Director of Research for Micro-Pulse Controls Inc., with offices in Burbank and Chatsworth.

And Kruse said he has an idea that would resolve the great Los Angeles leaf-blower crisis.

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Whether or not Kruse is selling technological snake oil, I don’t know. But the fact that this entrepreneurial engineer, maker of various automotive and aviation gizmos, was here talking up his new leaf-blower muffler system to anyone willing to listen may be interpreted as a sign that the City Council is right to try to enact a law that would force industry to build a quieter leaf blower. Surely, as Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg noted, if we can send rockets to Mars, we can design more agreeable gardening tools.

Kruse certainly thinks so. But Kruse says he also believes Mayor Riordan should veto the ordinance to remove seemingly contradictory elements and draft a new one that would better address concerns about the noise, exhaust and dusty nuisance of leaf blowers.

“They city’s passed a law against the gardener. They have not regulated the manufacturers, they have not regulated themselves,” Kruse said.

Before long, Kruse led me across 1st Street so he could feed the parking meter and remove a leaf blower from the back seat of his Lumina. It was contained in a kind of aluminum box--part of the prototype for a muffler system that Kruse says took him only two weeks to design and build. The box wore a sticker that said, “QZ--Quiet Zone Technology.”

Kruse yanked the cord on the gas motor a few times before it started. He donned the machine to demonstrate that his system didn’t add much weight. Nobody had a decibel meter handy, but it wasn’t nearly as loud as the leaf blower used by the crew I pay $40 a month to keep my little jungle of bougainvillea, plumbago and lantana presentable. Then again, I wouldn’t exactly say it was quiet.

Decibels are important to the debate. The older models that provoke most complaints, Kruse said, register 80 decibels. A new Echo model, demonstrated for Riordan on Wednesday by the Assn. of Latin American Gardeners, has been tested at below 65 in a park setting, though the acoustics of residential areas may raise the noise level a bit.

The way Kruse reads L.A.’s new ordinance, 65 decibels may or may not be an important standard. One section suggests that the use of all gasoline-powered leaf blowers would be prohibited within 500 feet of residences. But another section of the law suggests that the noise of gardening equipment should not exceed 65 decibels. And a lot of lawn mowers, he added, probably don’t meet that standard.

Kruse, a Burbank resident, said his company specializes in developing diesel-engine equipment to conform to air-emissions standards slated to take effect in 2010. He said he didn’t pay much attention to the leaf-blower brouhaha until a few weeks ago, when he heard a radio news report in which Adrian Alvarez, spokesman for the Assn. of Latin American Gardeners, expressed a desire to find someone who could make a quiet leaf blower. The gardeners group has lobbied for noise regulation, rather than a ban.

So the inventor took an Astron leaf blower that tested at 80 decibels and added a muffler extension. Then he built the aluminum enclosure for the engine.

The retrofitted machine, Kruse said, was tested in a residential area of Burbank without exceeding 65 decibels. And he said a test Monday in downtown Los Angeles, observed by a member of the LAPD’s noise enforcement team, showed that full-throttle operation did not exceed the ambient street noise of 65 decibels.

Kruse wasn’t the only inventor to make the scene Wednesday on the south lawn of City Hall. Another man appeared with a battery-powered leaf blower of his own design.

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It was all a bit odd, encountering this Mr. Wizard as an ally of the hunger strikers one day after a City Council debate featuring anti-leaf-blower testimony from “Mission Impossible” star Peter Graves. The surreal quality lifted somewhat when a City Hall reporter told me she believes the flags were lowered in remembrance of LAPD Officer Steve Gajda, who was killed in the line of duty on New Year’s Day.

The hunger strikers say they are willing to die in the line of duty. This mode of protest was sometimes practiced by Gandhi and Cesar Chavez, a demonstration meant to dramatize the injustice of war and political persecution. Chicano activist Adrian Alvarez, a UCLA graduate who helped organize the Assn. of Latin American Gardeners, seemed well aware that many people consider a hunger strike over leaf blowers to be political theater of the absurd.

“This is not a hunger strike about leaf blowers,” he said. “It’s a hunger strike for the right for us to make a living wage. A hunger strike about access to the democratic process. . . . This is an issue really between the haves and have-nots. It’s not about the leaf blower.”

Or maybe it’s about who has and has not the leaf blower.

Here’s wishing the inventors good luck. Here’s hoping the gardeners end their fast. And meanwhile, I’m wondering what I’ll do if my gardener tells me he’s raising his rates.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.