The Southern California city of Redondo Beach has applied a complete ban on all leaf blowers, whether gas- or battery-powered. (As a reminder: the legislation now under consideration by the Washington D.C. City Council would apply only to the hyper-polluting gas-powered models.)
"Leaf blower bans have been spreading across the country." From The Beach Reporter.
According to an article in The Beach Reporter, by David Rosenfeld, the Redondo Beach ban covers all types of blowers, and is being received successfully:
Soon after the ban on motorized leaf blowers took effect on Aug. 11, [a local family] the Siekers made up fliers notifying their neighbors about the prohibition and went around the neighborhood passing them out and speaking with people.
“We only had one or two people who didn’t agree with the leaf blower ban and said they would violate the rule,” Douglas Sieker said. "It was a matter of not wanting government to tell them what to do.”
Redondo Beach is actually late to the leaf blower ban game. The city of Los Angeles instituted its ban in the 1990s and similar bans exist in neighboring beach cities including Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach. For the past 20 years, leaf blower bans have been spreading across the country.
For the Siekers, leaf blowers started to become more of a nuisance in recent years. When things really started getting bad, Elaine began keeping a notebook. That’s when the couple calculated there were 26 leaf blowers going every six-day period....
“My wife would have to shut all the westerly facing windows when the gardeners came one or two doors down from us,” Sieker said. “If we left the windows open we would find our blinds and drapes full of dust.”
The Siekers were told by an arborist that leaf blowers could have been destroying their 20-year-old geranium plants. The arborist told them leaf blowers can push aphids and other insects from grass and leaf clippings into plants, Siekar said.
Read the full story here.