SPECIAL INTEREST

| SPECIAL INTEREST Blown Away

BY TOM FRANCISKOVICH

It was another gorgeous day in town when I decided to roll down all my windows and open the sunroof on my 1978 veggie oil-powered Mercedes. As I sat there at a stoplight going through downtown, I was blindsided by a plume of dust and the all-familiar sound of a gas-powered leaf blower, which had just fired up on the sidewalk to my right. I scrambled to roll up the windows, which is quite a process in my car—on a good day, one window will roll up at a time; otherwise they don’t roll up at all. On this day, the windows stayed down and the interior of my car was blanketed with whatever happened to be on the ground. Of course, I was more than a little bit annoyed, but I also felt bad for the equipment operator. It really wasn’t his fault and he gave me the “oops-sorry-about-that-bro” wave. After all he was just doing his job. But, are there other ways to do the job? Right now, as I type these words, another well-meaning gardener wielding a leaf blower is working outside my window and the noise is making me crazy. But, it has also got me thinking… Many communities have struggled with this issue, and it appears that San Luis Obispo County may now be primed to do so, as well. After recently coming through the plastic bag debate, leaf blowers are likely next up for the Board of Supervisors, as well as the various municipalities on the Central Coast. The framework for the discussion was set back in 2010 when a Grand Jury was convened to explore the issue. Its findings were summarized in a report titled, “Leaf Blower Hazards in San Luis Obispo County,” and it is not full of good news. After extensively researching the issue, the Grand Jury cited four primary hazards: 1) Typical two-stroke gasoline-powered leaf blowers running for one hour emit pollution equal to one car driven for 200 miles in a confined

area; 2) Approximately five pounds of particulate matter (PM) per leaf blower per hour are blown into the air and can take hours or days to settle; 3) Gas-powered leaf blowers can generate a decibel level that can cause permanent hearing loss to the operator and an annoyance to anyone nearby; 4) Young children and homebound seniors are most vulnerable to the localized air and noise pollution of leaf blowers. The modern day leaf blower has not evolved all that much since it was invented as a crop duster in Japan during the early 1970’s. And it was during the mid-1970’s when Californians began repurposing them as an effective, watersaving alternative to hosing down driveways and sidewalks during a drought period. After observing the amazing cleanliness of their front yards, it was not long before neighbor after neighbor fell in line, often purchasing the plug-in electric version that was available in hardware stores at the time. Commercial landscapers began embracing the leaf blower after a more powerful and more mobile gas-powered version was developed. During their early days, the electric-powered homeowner versions were mostly tolerated. The problems that did arise were often of the very local variety, as in, “My neighbor keeps blowing all of his dust and leaves into my yard!” Rarely, did municipalities have much of a debate about leaf blowers because no one really had a problem with them—besides they

made the whole town look like Main Street at Disneyland. All was fine and good, until the gas-powered variety began to explode in popularity. Back in the 1980’s, it was much more common to pay the neighborhood kid to mow your lawn and push a broom to clean up the mess afterward than it was to hire a professional. But, as commercial landscapers became more efficient, in large part because of the gas-powered leaf blower, service rates began to drop and it became a viable option for homeowners. “Mow and blow” operations are now a quintessential element of suburban living in America. And, for cities such as San Luis Obispo, where there is a high incidence of single-family dwellings that are income rental properties, twice-monthly yard maintenance service is customarily included as a matter of standard practice. It seems as if the popular radio song from the eighties, “Nobody Walks in LA,” could be re-released today with the title, “Nobody Mows their Own Lawn.” And, it is the commercial two-stroke gas-powered leaf blower that has fallen into the crosshairs of the Grand Jury report. Two-stroke, or twocycle engines, are different than the four-stoke engine in your car in several important ways. Without going into too much detail, the two-stroke variety fires on every revolution, giving it a much better power to weight ratio, which is why you see two-stroke motors in places where being lightweight is also important: ATV’s, mopeds, jet skis, lawn mowers, and, of course, leaf blowers. The main disadvantage of the two-stroke motor is that they are highly polluting—it is not as effective at converting all the fuel to energy as its four-stroke cousin before emitting the remnants from the cylinder as exhaust. And, two-strokes are much louder and create a distinctive highdecibel whine. Although there are four-stoke leaf blowers on the market, most of those still in use are of the two-stroke variety. It is clear that manufacturers are on the four-stroke bandwagon, mostly for reasons of fuel-efficiency, and it will probably just become a matter of time before they are the standard. But, there is still the matter of noise. A typical two-stroke leaf blower averages a decibel level of approximately 70-75dB from 50 feet away; a typical four-stroke measures in at 65dB. Under current San Luis Obispo County law, noise from leaf blowers is not to exceed 70dB. And, the City of San Luis Obispo takes it a step further by prohibiting their use on Sundays. Currently, neither the City nor the County actively enforces the noise ordinance. So, why not just go back to the old electric models? Or, switch to the newer battery operated units? The bottom line is that they are just not powerful enough for commercial use. For example, a top-of-the-line leaf blower can generate blasts up to 280mph, which compares to a Category 5 hurricane at 160mph. Plus, electric blowers limit mobility and length of use. Regardless of power or portability, the elephant in the room still remains: artificially blowing dust into the air is not doing any of us any good, if for no other reason than the increase in the number of allergens floating around. But, it goes much deeper than that, as much of the PM composition of the dust SLO LIFE MagazInE jun/jly 2013 | 39

Blown Away

blasted into the ether is of the fine particulate variety, 10 micrometers or less—that kind of stuff does not normally exist in nature and, therefore, makes its way past the body’s defenses and goes directly into the lungs causing an entire host of both short and long-term health issues. Does that mean it’s time to ban leaf blowers altogether and go back to hiring the neighborhood kid? Maybe. More than 300 cities nationwide have restricted or outright banned leaf blowers, including 100 in California. And many have developed smart policy around their use. Carmel, another popular tourist-destination-by-the-sea, became the first municipality in the nation to institute a wholesale ban on all leaf blowers, gas or electric. And, to the south, voters in Santa Barbara opted to ban leaf blowers (they still do allow electric leaf blowers, but they cannot be used within 250 feet of a residential zone). Even further south, Los Angeles, the city where nobody walks is also the city, since 1998, where nobody uses a leaf blower. A close look at the City of Claremont, which implemented a complete ban of all leaf blowers in 1990, reveals that the transition was not as difficult as expected. It was calculated that its maintenance workload on city properties increased by just 6% with the use of rakes and brooms instead of leaf blowers. Other cities have reported similar results and, although many of their local landscapers have had to raise their service rates as a result, no municipality has reversed their bans. It would seem then that San Luis Obispo County, a place that hosts millions of tourists each year would be prime to implement a ban on leaf blowers. Yet, since the Grand Jury report in 2010, not much has changed. And, what about the county seat, the City of San Luis Obispo—the city that was the first in the nation to tackle smoking in public, prohibit fast food drive-thrus, focus on “neighborhood wellness,” and take pride in all manner of its open space and environmentally-friendly initiatives—will it continue to allow leaf blowers to exist within the city limits? As always, it comes down to a combination of political will and timing, which makes the current special election to fill the City Council seat vacated by Andrew Carter that much more intriguing [find out how the candidates would vote on this issue and more by turning to the Voters’ Guide on page 40]. To be sure, the timing has changed. Particularly in a year such as this where rain has been so scarce. The make up of matter blown into the air is more dust than leaves. And, with less rain to clean out the air above us, smoggy skies have become much more apparent. Allergy sufferers, who are legion in this area, report that leaf blowers do not help matters. Or, maybe people are just tired of seeing their neighbor’s gardener blowing leaves into their yard only to have their gardener blow them back a couple of days later. Perhaps we have a lot more knowledge now and better understand the damage we are doing to our environment and ourselves. Perhaps Central Coast residents have finally had enough of the many backpack-style engines competing to see who can make the most noise and want to restore peace and quiet. Or, maybe they just want to see the neighborhood kid push a broom again. SLO LIFE