Municipalities Weigh Regulations On Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers

Francis J. Adamczeski Landscaping is a one-man crew—the company’s namesake. It wasn’t always that way, though. Mr. Adamczeski said he used to have four additional men working for him.

“It was hard to collect, and make payroll and insurance fees for them to be covered,” Mr. Adamczeski said. “Now, I am a single landscaper. I do it all myself. I have a few estates that I take care of and whatever I can do, I can do.”

On a hot August morning, he said working solo makes for a busy day. He’s got his pickup truck, mower, rakes, gloves, tools and gas-powered leaf blower that he uses from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., hopping around to at least six different estates in Southampton Village.

“I get paid for what I do. My plan is to get in there as quickly as I can and get the job done as quickly as I can, because I am not making any money the longer I take,” he said.

Nearby, truckloads of workers from other companies jump out of landscaping vehicles with leaf blowers in hand—already revving their engines.

“They are just making their hourly wages. Watch, they’ll just go into that place and they’ll take their time. They could be done in a couple of minutes but they’ll stay for another hour—blowing and making noise,” Mr. Adamczeski said.

That’s the problem many residents have with landscapers in the area: their gas-powered leaf blowers make a ruckus. Opponents say noise pollution can lead to hearing loss and even cause cardiovascular problems for residents and workers exposed to it for long periods.

The landscaping industry, on the other hand, contends the alternatives—namely, electric battery-powered leaf blowers—are too expensive, inefficient and would require excessive hours of additional training.

“If they made the electric blowers more efficient and more powerful, and less expensive, I could see switching over,” Mr. Adamczeski said.

The debate over the gas-powered leaf blower created the perfect storm during the Southampton Village Board meeting on August 21. Residents complained about the excessive noise. Local landscaping companies packed the boardroom to defend their industry. Pat Voges of Nassau Suffolk Landscape Grounds Association led the charge.

“Battery-powered blowers are expensive,” Ms. Voges said. “They’re great for homeowners, but not landscapers. Are they the future? Absolutely, but not now.”

NSLGA is a trade group that represents professional landscaping and gardening services on Long Island. In addition to its advocacy work, the association teaches and certifies its members in consumer affairs law, pesticide regulation and disposal practices.

Ms. Voges pointed to the large estates landscapers need to tend to on a weekly or biweekly basis during the summer months on the South Fork and around Southampton Village—where officials have been considering stricter regulations on gas-powered leaf blowers to make for a quieter community. She argues landscapers use the device out of necessity and more regulations would threaten their way of business.

“You have to have trimmers, mowers and blowers for these million-dollar homes,” Ms. Voges said. “Homeowners don’t want to see grass clippings on their lawn. When Madison Avenue says that grass clippings are [posh], then it will be acceptable.”

The two-stroke engine that powers a gas leaf blower emits a low frequency and carries noise a further distance, which Orson Cummings, a resident of Walnut Street and vocal opponent of the lawn maintenance tool, says makes him sick.

“I work from home and 4 hours a day is the sound that you can’t get away from.” Mr. Cummings said. He has gathered more than 100 signatures from village residents to ban gas-powered leaf blowers altogether.

Southampton Village does not have any ban on blowers, but has noise standards in its code. In a residential district from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., sound cannot exceed 65 decibels. Top-branded blowers by Makita, Shindaiwa, STIHL, Husqvama, RedMax, Maruyama and Echo peak over 75 decibels at 50 feet, and over 100 decibels at the ear.

The battery-powered leaf blower aren’t much softer—the quietest one runs at about 65 decibels. Having 65 decibels of sound is almost as loud as running a vacuum cleaner or a hair dryer.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration permits exposure of 90 decibels for an 8-hour work day and only two hours at 100 decibels without ear protection.

Ms. Voges said there are possible compromises that the village could enforce that the association can support like no weekend service or additional time limitations.

“But you can’t take equipment away from these guys,” she added.

“Time restraints [for blower use] would really benefit the town, the village and the landscapers,” said Richard Mylander, an Eastport landscaper. “This would be instead of a ban because you are still going to be have noise from hedge trimmers, weed wackers and mowers—it’s not going to alleviate the noise.”

Village Board member Richard Yastrzemski said that blowers used to only blow leaves in the fall.

“Now we’re seeing sights of decadence with a guy blowing grass clippings off of his lawn into the street,” Mr. Yastrzemski said. “How do you phase into this without damaging the industry?”

To go even further, Village Board member Nancy McGann speculated that the board should divide up the village into set working days so that noise does not constantly pervade through the streets.

“There are landscapers scattered throughout the village,” Ms. McGann said. “It’s not just one set of noise in one corner of the village and no noise in another corner.”

Ms. Voges said another solution is for the village to adopt a landscaper’s license.

“It keeps these guys that are doing work on the side who don’t have any insurance off of your streets,” she said. “They are your biggest problem.” To boot, NSLGA would be willing to hold training sessions in the village.

Mayor Michael Irving said that the village used to require a license but it was rescinded several years ago. He added the village is currently looking into it.

“I’m happy to pay a licensing fee, if you enforce it. Everyone would be happy to write you a check,” said Don Mahoney, of Mahoney Associates Inc. “We are for licensing and work-hours, but we need you to enforce it.”

Enforcement is easier said than done, Mr. Irving said. It’s a problem most South Fork municipalities have grappled with for some time now.

Anything short of code enforcement walking around with a decibel reader and a stopwatch is unacceptable to Jamie Banks, the executive director of Quiet Communities. The nonprofit advocates low-noise, zero-emission landscape practices. Ideally, Dr. Banks said in an interview, ditching gas-powered leaf blowers is the best option for residents’ health and the environment.

“We are asking business to make a technology shift,” Dr. Banks said. “You used to handwrite your essay and now we use word processors. There is always a learning curve involved. You might have employees that don’t have the language skills to pick up training—if it’s even being offered—to understand this new technology. And for businesses, that’s a challenge.”

Quiet Communities has only started to discuss alternatives to traditional blowers with the village. It has, however, assisted in nudging along Southampton Town’s transition into using electric leaf blowers in public spaces—albeit, a slow process, but an effort to lead by example, Dr. Banks said.

“There is a strong anti-regulatory sentiment in the industry and going through the political process can be tedious to enact these kinds of regulations.”

The nonprofit is compiling an environmental impact assessment of the entire town of Southampton to trace the air, water and noise pollution effects of gas-powered blowers and how measures like the one the town is taking is benefiting the environment. It’s estimated that one hour of a gas-powered leaf blower emits about 50 times as much particulate matter and 28 times as much carbon monoxide than an average-sized car.
Dr. Banks claims Southampton Town is the forerunner on the East Coast for creating this “green-zone” initiative. Towns, including Huntington, and villages, including Westbury and Sands Point, have already adopted stricter noise pollution laws to limit weekend service and sound produced by high-decibel devices.

New York State agencies and Suffolk County are also on alert to the potential damages gas-powered leaf blowers could cause. In 2017, the state Assembly’s Committee on Environmental Education called on state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos to include information on the department’s website to explain what the hazards of using gas-powered blowers are and how they can be mitigated. It is already the official stance of the DEC that the fine particles kicked up by leaf blowers can seriously threaten heart and lung health. The Suffolk County Legislature passed a resolution—also last year—calling on the county’s Department of Public Works to study alternatives to the blowers.

Leaf blowers were a big part of East Hampton Village Board member Arthur Graham’s winning re-election bid this past June. In January, Mr. Graham proposed a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers from June 1 to September 15, when the blowers are used primarily to blow grass clippings from lawns. It caused strife between board members who sought to appease local residents while landscaping companies expressed concern about how this could harm their business.

The ban never went through. But Mr. Graham said the board is still working through the finer details on how to address the growing problem.

“I am still in favor of quieting it down. Whether we are going to go all electric, or require muffled, 65-decibel blowers, or more training of blowers, we aren’t sure,” he said.

East Hampton Town also doesn’t have a hard ban on gas-powered leaf blowers. It does, however, have similar noise regulations to Southampton Village: no more than 65 decibels from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in residential districts.