Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers

Janet Hommel a resident in Winter Park wrote an article about a new issue that may be looked at by the commissioners or Winter Park. Some people are unhappy with the noise that leaf blowers and lawn equipment make in the morning when you are trying to sleep or do your zoom meetings. Stating that “Hundreds of cities across the country have significantly curtailed or even banned the use of landscaping tools powered by noisy two-stroke gas engines. ” California being the first in 1970s some places like Palm Beach has banned the use of two-stroke gas engines for lawn tools.

The question Janet raises is even if the citizens care enough to do something about it.  Let face it. Most government leaders are not going to want to impose new restriction unless the citizens are making noise and asking them to do something.  Then Janet goes into the reasons why the load noise is bad and how it can damage the hearing of the staff.  And the reason why all this bad stuff is still used is because:  “It’s the bottom line. The fastest, and therefore cheapest, way for a landscape contractor to move debris is not with a rake and broom or with an electric blower, it’s with that ear-splitting, particulate-spewing gas blower.”

The goal of the article seems to be to try to get the community to write the Mayor and request that they force landscape contractors to take on the tens of thousands of dollars in investment to use electric tools which are quite but require batteries and charging them at night.  This will increase the cost of landscaping but at least it will be a quite morning.  What the article does not say is that forcing the small landscape contractors to switch to electric will crush their business and force them out of Winter Park.  It will be nice for the larger firms that will then be able to pick up the work left by the small out of business firms, remove competition and raising the cost of landscaping overall.  You can read the entire article over at the Winter Park Voice.