Sonoma’s leaf-blower initiative latest skirmish in long battle

About 50 cities in California ban or limit leaf blowers, making Sonoma a late arrival to the ban-the-blower party.|

“The ban-the-blower forces complain not only that the tools are noisy and smoky but that they scatter more dust than they collect. Professional gardeners, reluctant to throw in the Space Age broom, maintain that the tools have not only revolutionized their business but have helped keep America beautiful.”

So reads a newspaper article on a growing trend to ban leaf blowers that sounds like it could have been written last week, about Sonoma. But the story is dated Dec. 23, 1985, and it ran in the Los Angeles Times. Clearly, this is not a new issue, nor a local one.

Sonoma's immersion in the quicksand of leaf blower control places the city smack dab in the middle of a statewide if not national debate that shows no sign of letting up. Some estimate that more than 50 cities in the state have some sort of control over the landscaping machines, ranging from limiting hours of operation, which is what Sonoma currently does, to outright bans for both gas and electric blowers.

Sonoma's current regulations – the ordinance was passed in 2011 to limit hours of operation – are fairly mainstream among towns with leaf-blower ordinances. The effort to ban gas-powered blowers – which was approved by the City Council in May and is up for public referendum on the city ballot as Measure V – would, if passed, put us only a few steps outside the mainstream, but by no means on an island.

According to a 2010 Consumer Reports survey, 32 of the 55 state jurisdictions with some form of blower restrictions ban gasoline powered leaf-blowers; six of those ban both gas and electric. Twenty-two merely restrict days and hours of use. (The City of Davis does neither, but bans blowers above a certain decibal level.) Thus, for towns that have implemented leaf-blower restrictions, it is more common to ban gas blowers than it is to allow them. (Those numbers, of course, have likely shifted since 2010.)

However, given there are 482 municipalities in California, having leaf-blower restrictions at all is far from the norm. Limiting leaf blowers is anomalous; laissez-faire is apparently the law of the land.

Still, knowing that over half of the cities that regulate leaf blowers ban gas machines outright shows precedence for Measure V. And their reasons for doing so are consistent: the generally louder range of noise that two-stroke engines emit; air pollution from the gas motors themselves (which do not have catalytic converters as do automobiles); and the micro-debris they kick up by their action, the so-called “fugitive dust” that some blame for respiratory ailments.

With the single exception of Mill Valley, all of the cities in California that ban all leaf blowers are seaside communities – Santa Monica, Laguna Beach, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Del Mar, as well as the state's first to ban the blowers, Carmel-by-the-Sea, which did so in 1975.

Marin County has a number of cities with some form of leaf-blower control, including San Anselmo, Fairfax, Ross, Tiburon, Belvedere and San Rafael. In Sonoma County, only two do – Rohnert Park, which prohibits leaf-blower use between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. most days, and Sonoma, which currently limits residential use of leaf blowers to between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, a bit longer in public and park zones where they can fire up at 7 a.m., and longer still in industrial zones where they can be used until 11 p.m.

Looking at the effect of leaf blower bans or day/hourly restrictions in the nearby Marin communities can help put Measure V in context. Mill Valley's outright ban on gas-powered leaf blowers went into effect in 1993, the same year that the Township of San Anselmo implemented its own less draconian regulations, which limit days and hours of use.

It's instructive that Mill Valley doesn't entirely ban the use of leaf blowers, but controls leaf blowing, and hence the random dispersal of yard waste and fugitive dust. “Residents and gardeners can use electric leaf blowers or electric leaf vacuums to collect and dispose of leaves,” said Mill Valley's assistant city manager, Linn Walsh. “People generally blow the leaves into a pile and then collect them for disposal.”

Yet even now, 23 years since Mill Valley's rules went into effect, violations of the city's ban still occur. “It's mainly a problem with landscape contractors,” said Denise Anderson, maintenance operations supervisor in Mill Valley. “They already have the tools and they work in different cities, so they just use what's in their truck.” Residents can and do call the Mill Valley Police to complain, and citations are issued, but as Anderson said, “The police usually have more important things to do.”

Neighboring San Anselmo has also had leaf blower restrictions for over 20 years, limiting use to a three-hour window of 1 to 4 p.m. on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and then only for half an hour at a time per property.

Town Manager Debbie Stutsman tells the Index-Tribune, “The leaf blower ordinance was implemented in 1993 after six months of public workshops and comments. Since there were folks on both sides of the issue, the partial ban has worked reasonably well to satisfy those who wanted them banned completely and those who have a need to use blowers.”

When asked how the community has responded to the restrictions, Stutsman said, “At the time of the ordinance, I believe leaf blowers were a fairly new phenomena, and emotions were running high on both sides of the issue. We still get the occasional complaint, but knowing there are limits seems to satisfy most.”

Just in the next valley over, St. Helena experienced its own leaf blower rebellion in 2012-13, culminating in a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers unless they bear a manufacturer's label specifying that they won't exceed 65 decibels (dB) from 50 feet away. St. Helena also requires all gas leaf blowers to “be operated with all mufflers, full extension tubes, shrouds and sound-attenuating devices supplied by the manufacturer for that leaf blower and shall be maintained in sound operating condition.”

A few communities that at one time implemented leaf blower restrictions have revisited the issue, often at the request of city council members who weren't around for the first debate. In Los Altos, two council members in 2011 asked staff to look into the ordinance and bring back revised recommendations. But following staff's recommendations not to change anything, and a public hearing where comments were overwhelmingly in favor of leaf blower restrictions, the councilmembers dropped their efforts.

Likewise in Tiburon, where just in February of this year two council members protested the 1995 regulations saying they were an “imposition” while the mayor wanted to eliminate all gas-powered landscaping machines all together. After some council discussion, the issue was dropped without amendment.

Perhaps the closest cognate to the Sonoma situation is in Menlo Park, where the city council passed an ordinance banning leaf blowers in 1998 – which was overturned by referendum a few months later. The city council then responded with limits on loudness and hours of operation of gas-powered blowers, which are still on the books.

In short, civic controls on leaf blowers are not an issue unique to Sonoma, and wherever it's been implemented city officials say it has not presented any significant problems – aside from politicians, who just can't leave a loud issue alone.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.

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