by Laura Glesby | Jun 3, 2022 3:17 pm
(37) Comments | Post a Comment | E-mail the Author
Posted to: Environment, Health, Labor, True Vote
Gas-powered leaf blowers: lifeline or life-destroying?
Alder Avshalom-Smith: Blowers hurt breathers; ban hurts businesses.
The environmentalists said: The persistent roar of gas-powered leaf blowers pollute the air and cause long-term health and environmental damage.
The landscapers whose income currently depends on those leaf blowers said: Advocates who want to ban them are out of touch.
“ I want to see how many calluses they have,” said one professional.
Those two sides squared off in the Board of Alders chamber at City Hall on Thursday evening armed with statistics, rebuttals, and in one case, photographic surveillance of another testifier.
They testified before the Alders’ City Services and Environmental Policy committee during a workshop on a potential city ban of the gas-powered leaf blowers — and ignited discussion about the urgency of environmental action, the collective consequences of personal choices, and the economic burdens of industry-wide changes that often fall on working-class shoulders. The city’s Environmental Advisory Council has been advocating for the Board of Alders to consider a phase-out or ban on gas-powered leaf blowers, hoping to spur a transition among local landscaping companies to electric machines.
Gas-powered leaf blowers use two-stroke engines that run on a combination of gasoline and oil, and they are less expensive than electric leaf blowers (although testifiers on Thursday disagreed on the scale of that cost discrepancy).
Alders weren’t yet weighing a particular piece of legislation, Rather, they heard testimony about leaf blowers in the form of a “ workshop” to inform any future action on the matter. Over 100 other municipalities and 15 states have enacted gas leaf blower bans.
The Environmental Advisory Council has cited air pollutants emitted from gas-powered leaf blowers — including volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and fine particulate matter — as one key reason the devices should be banned or phased out.
The council’s proposal also focuses on the gas blowers’ loud noise, which they said can range from 95 to 115 decibels at the operator’s ear and from 65 to 75 decibels from 50 feet away.
Advocates noted on Thursday that the sound can damage human hearing and interrupt wildlife activity. Some said their ability to enjoy time outside, or even in their homes, is frequently disrupted by the loud whir of gas leaf blowers.
According to Viveca Morris, the executive director of Yale’s Law, Ethics, and Animals Program, the sound of leaf blowers affects bird behavior, which can in turn have consequences for local pest control and pollination.
Some local environmental activists stressed that their goal was not to ban leaf blowing altogether, but to spark a widespread shift toward greener landscaping supplies. They argued that a shift to electric leaf blowing would mitigate environmental, health, and noise concerns. (Some landscapers, meanwhile, dispute that electric leaf blowers are significantly quieter.)
“ The goal here is electrification,” said Mary Woolsey. “ It’s not to outlaw all types of leaf blowers.”
Florestine Taylor argued that an ordinance phasing out gas leaf blowers would aid small businesses in making the transition before other regulatory agencies require it.
“ This is an opportunity where people don’t have to be left behind,” she said. “ The change is coming.” Taylor added that she’s concerned about the consequences of inhaling toxins and withstanding loud noise for hours on end each day when it comes to the landscapers’ health.
Others, meanwhile, contended that any type of leaf blowing can be damaging to the earth.
Suzanne Roberts argued that “ blowing all the leaves away is a terrible idea” because “ they have a function.” Leaf-clearing “ deprives plants and wildlife of mulch,” she said. When necessary, those testifiers urged landscapers to rake leaves by hand rather than using mechanical methods of leaf-clearing.
“ I don’t think that everyone has a right to pollute,” she said.
Laura Cahn arrived at the Board of Alders’ chamber prepared: she carried printed-out photographs she’d taken of the landscapers who worked across the street from her Westville home — evidence, she contended, of a handful of violations by Greater New Haven Landscaping, Inc., the company leading the opposition to the ban.
Cahn, who chairs the Environmental Advisory Council, accused Greater New Haven Landscaping of running three gas-powered leaf blowers at once, which she said generated enough noise to travel through layers of windows to the back of her house. She also photographed the landscapers leaf-blowing without personal protective equipment such as face masks.
“ I do not believe I should have to wear ear protection in my own home,” Cahn said.
A few speakers later, Casey Frawley — whose father, Mike Frawley, owns Greater New Haven Landscaping and initiated the public hearing in defense of gas-powered leaf blowers — approached the alders.
“ I’m the person across the street” whom Cahn photographed, the younger Frawley said.
“ I do not give her any permission to take my photograph,” he stated. He said his previous interactions with Cahn amounted to “ harassment”: “ I get sworn at, I get told she’s gonna call the cops on me,” he alleged.
Michael Frawley, left, at a 2016 community meeting.
Casey Frawley also took issue with environmentalists’ statements of concern over landscapers’ health.
“ The notion that they’re trying to look out for us from a health standpoint, that’s not true. We’re fine,” he said.
His father, Mike Frawley, rebutted other arguments in favor of a gas blower ban. He said that simply raking leaves by hand is not a feasible business model for landscapers who are paid to work all day, at a certain pace.
He said that electric leaf-blowing technology is not as effective, yet far more expensive, compared to gas-powered blowers. He estimated that the average gas-powered blower costs about $600, while electric blowers can cost $2,500, in his experience.
“ To survive in this business is not easy,” Frawley said. “ The only people who are going to be able to afford this equipment are people like Yale University, who have an unlimited endowment and budget … but for the common man, it’s just not going to happen.”
The burden of transitioning to electric-powered tools will fall on small businesses already struggling to make it through supply-chain hiccups, labor shortages, and inflation, Frawley said. “ These people deserve the credit for making New Haven’s neighborhoods clean and beautiful.”
As for concerns about the environmental impact, Frawley questioned why residents are targeting leaf blowers and not other two-stroke engine tools like lawn mowers and chainsaws.
Finally, Frawley compared the decibel range of a gas-powered blower to the volume of vacuum cleaners and hand drills.
“ There’s some people that complain about children playing on the playground,” Frawley said. There are going to be things that annoy people as far as noise goes,” but leaf blowing is “ a fact of life.“ Woolsey countered that since decibels are a logarithmic measure, a 95-decibel leaf blower, for instance, is 100 times louder than a 75-decibel vacuum cleaner, marking a significance difference in volume.
Woolsey added that in addition to a sound’s decibel, its ability to travel far depends on its frequency — and gas leaf blowers, she said, have a particularly low frequency compared to lawn mowers and other devices. “ As many as 90 homes can be affected by the sound of leaf blowers” at one time, she said.
Other environmental activists noted that alders had recently declared a “ Climate Emergency” in 2019. Climate change is too urgent an issue to justify waiting for technology to improve, they argued.
Another landscaper, who identified himself as Carlos, pointed out that a majority of testifiers against gas-powered leaf blowing live in the wealthier neighborhoods of East Rock and Westville. He described his typical work day tending to lawns across these neighborhoods: “ I wake up at 7 in the morning, I did not have lunch, I didn’t have dinner yet,” he said at around 8:30 p.m.
“ They are living in a different world,” Carlos said of the anti-leaf-blower advocates. “ I want to see how many calluses they have.”
Thursday's City Services and Environmental Policy Committee meeting.
Reflecting on the issue after public testimony concluded, alders came away from the hearing with different takeaways.
Prospect Hill/Dixwell/Newhallville alder Steve Winter said the ban would be a matter of environmental justice.
“ We have the 11th worst asthma rate in the entire United States,” Winter said. We need to do something about it. We can’t just ignore it.”
Hill South Alder Kampton Singh, meanwhile, said he believes “ the technology is still in its infancy … I hope that we, as a committee, will look into that.”
Newhallville Alder Devin Avshalom-Smith expressed conflicting impulses.
“ I think about independent contractors in my ward, primarily people of color who are not rich,” Avshalom-Smith said. “ I don’t anticipate that they’d be able to afford new electric machines right now. I could see this putting a lot of local businesses out of business”
At the same time, he said, when he thinks of his ward, “ I also consider the people who would be affected” most by the health hazards of air pollution and climate change.
He concluded that alders should implement “ some sort of assistance for small businesses in order for gas powered to be phased out. We would have to help the local industry prepare for the change.”
East Rock Alder Anna Festa suggested that alders consider a trade-in program to ease businesses’ transition to electric-powered blowers.
“ We really don’t have a choice. It is for human health, and the health of our environment,” she said. “ Change is already here.”
Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.
Share this story with others.
Commenting has closed for this entry
Environmentalists are indeed a strange bunch. All this pie-in-the-sky nonsense. The "goal is electrification". Ok - we'll all use batteries that are made from combiantions of plastic(pertroleum based) and certain mined minerals(eco-damage) that are not unlimited, have a definitive shelf-life, are non-recyclable, therefore environmentally unfriendly, and take fossil-fuel generated electricity to charge, and repeatedly charge them up for use. Freedom isn't free, neither is electricity - it comes from somewhere.
Laura Cahn does not need Casey Frawley’s permission to photograph him. Assuming Mr. Frawley is displaying himself in public, Ms. Cahn has every right to photograph him and his activities as long as the resulting photographs are not used for commercial purposes without his permission. A company by the name of EGO produces a line of battery powered electric leaf blowers, the most powerful of which yields 765 cubic ft per minute at 200 mph. That is close to or better than, most gas powered blowers. It sells for $329, not $2,500 as Mr. Frawley would have you believe.
My wife has bought a suite of electric outdoor tools: a battery pack with interchangeable attachments: leaf blower, edger, trimmer, pole chainsaw, as well as an electric chainsaw. They are quieter and less messier than gasoline/oil mix equivalents, but less powerful and the batteries wear out quickly. Rakes work fine for me on lawns, but I would guess would lead to repetitive motion injuries for someone raking all day everyday.
Gas powered blowers are one of the most damaging pieces of equipment to the health of this city, probably killing far more people than assault rifles do each year (indirectly, via noise and pollution). They should be banned immediately in urban areas. This shouldn’t even be a debate. Landscapers can continue to use them in areas with low population density, like Bethany. But in New Haven, where there are up to 20,000 people per square mile and the asthma rate is ten times higher than what it is in Bethany? No way. Ban all of them starting tomorrow. Have a buy back fund to help landscapers that live here and can document that most of their work is in New Haven replace them.
A couple of days ago when leaving for work, I saw two landscapers using two leaf blowers to clean off a a driveway that was just big enough to hold 2 cars at 7:05 in the morning Anyways, that's my story.
The phrase, "Nero fiddled while Rome burned"..... All this angst over lawn work?!? Really?? They come. they work, they leave.... how bad is that? But at the same time, the East Shore's complaints about pollution and noise disturbance at Tweed was mocked by some of these same commenters. Perhaps the aggrieved residents should move to the country, like we were told by our fellow city residents or "tough luck" by our mayor.... why is this worth hours of aldermanic time and attention? They have much bigger fish to fry, as New Haven "burns"...
I have callouses because I rake my own lawn and o other manly stuff…so there. To make a buck these guys ruin entire neighborhoods dinnertimes and weekends so let’s Start with a ban on all commercial landscaping except 9-5 M-F. Then go electric (the equipment is not outrageously expensive as claimed) and implement the requirement in 12-18 months so the businesses can plan. That’s fair.
Why do some landscapers use leaf blowers every week all spring and summer? I mow my own lawn but don't use a leaf blower. Any grass clippings or leaves left on pavement blow away on their own soon enough. I do hire a landscaper who uses power equipment for the big leaf cleanup in the fall. How about restricting use of leaf blowers to a specified time in the fall? That can be the first step towards guiding landscapers to more environmentally responsible practices.
Saturday morning, the leaf blower's been going for nigh on 10 minutes already and it's 7:20. Whirrrrr, whirrrr, whirrrr. WTH? Worse than actual leaf blowing (if possible) is the blowing of mown grass off the driveways, sidewalks and streets! Really? Is that necessary? Get a rake, get a broom!
The so-called environmental activists conveniently disregard any discussion that electric batteries are extremely toxic from cradle to grave. The cobalt and lithium mining alone is already an ecological disaster and lest ye forget they're literally mined by children and the poor in countries like China and various countries in Africa. Far enough from the Westville elite to be out of sight an out of mind. All it takes is one person trying to save the world to step on the backs of people just trying to put food on the table. Keep it petty New Haven.
Buy back program is a great idea. Are we going to do away with gas cars? If so, sign me up.
Teens literally murder each other in the streets and bring guns to vigils. This is not important enough to be discussed. Gun shots and sirens are much louder.
The amount of people here comparing the work it takes to clear their own quarter acre lawn/property with commercial landscaping (dozens of properties per day) just shows how clueless white collars are to how the world works. In commercial landscaping, time is indeed money. They are moving rapidly from property to property and are limited by daylight hours to complete jobs. They don’t have time to manually rake every lawn. And if they left leaves and grass clippings all over the roads and sidewalks, these same commenters would be blasting them for that too. If you want to ban gas blowers, fine. But don’t pretend clearing your little lawn is analogous to commercial landscaping. And provide the same subsidies and tax breaks you give big business to work in New Haven.
One simple, initial step is for the city government to phase out its own gas-powered leaf blowers. It could also eliminate the exemption in the noise control ordinance for lawn and garden equipment (this would require state approval).
The change is coming to do away with gas and oil and coal powered items. Electric can be more sustainable, depending on the sources of electric power. The goal should be to make machines cleaner, greener and quieter. But as Alders Devin Avshalom-Smith and Anna Festa pointed out, there should be a gradual phasing out and a trade in or assistance program to help people make the switch, so as not to economically harm smaller independent lower income workers. To expect hard working landscapers to rake leaves by hand is unacceptable to me. If you have ever raked leaves all day long from sunup to sundown, seven days a week, to support yourself, then you can talk about banning leaf blowers, if you have never worked as a landscaper worker doing leaf removal, then you don’t understand what you are asking of these hard working folks.
Starving trees by blowing off leaves they drop and denying them the valuable nutrients they need to survive is nuts! It's destructive! It's noisy. It's a money maker...get rid of your idea of a manicured lawn that no one walks on! There is no need to rake leaves and people should not have lawns! Lawns are another waste of time, money and they endanger the growth of a natural habitat that small insects depend upon to live and these insects are nutrients to birds!!! Let natural things grow where they want to...it's much better for the environment! Evidence of the benefits of leaving growing plants alone is the trend can be seen on the sides of highways. Saves labor. Saves energy, saves the earth. Who cares about a lawn? What use is it to insects and other living things we need to balance our environment? Lawns take up space where nutritious plants can grow and that support other forms of life. I am sick and tired of hearing the din of leaf blowers...even if it's not loud, it is annoying and there is no reason to blow leaves...if you don't like what leaves do to your grass then don't have grass! Trees take tons of carbon out of the air and do thousands of other things for us that support a healthy lifestyle. Let them have the nutrients they, themselves produced. Get rid of the damned leaf blowers. The earth will thank you for it. I am a CT Licensed Arborist, retired.
How about this? Leaving grass clippings where they are allows them to compost back into the soil and maintain the nutrients that were already there; this reducing the amount of fertilization one needs. Just ban the leaf blowing of non autumn leaf drops entirely to force a cultural change of accepting what’s clearly better on a number of levels.
And how about this? Require all residential customers of landscaping services to provide the landscapers with access to one 15 amp outlet that they may draw upon for 10amps continually for the duration of the landscapers visit. That way landscapers can hook up a recharger pack for their spare batteries to replace the ones they expend during their visit. This puts the energy cost directly upon the consumer where it should be. A Dewalt elec lawnmower running with two 20V batteries can do your average New Haven lawn. This recharger draws max 10 amps and can recharge 4 20V batteries in 60 min. https://www.dewalt.com.au/products/dcb104-xe--xr-multi-voltage-4-port-8a-charger
these comments are why people find liberals obnoxious so obnoxious you cant even beat a realty tv star or klansmen
Frawley’s quote that “leaf blowing is a fact of life” is comical. Apparently leaf blowers have only been around for about 70 years (much shorter than how long “life” has been around) and I wager that they could be phased out of existence even quicker. Here’s a type of leaf blower that is a true fact of life - the wind. Lawns and lawn maintenance are wasteful and harmful. Grass is useless and keeping it pristine and clear of any of those nasty leaves from those nasty trees is truly hilarious to think about if you really zoom out your perspective on human behaviors. Polluting the air and sound of your neighbors just to move near-weightless items of nature from one location to the other. Ban them yesterday.
Didn’t these people just bring 737’s into New Haven?!?!? Come on let’s put our hands on the table and compare decibel levels and air pollution to leaf blowers.
UnionYes it was good to get input from an experienced arborist. I am in an HOA in Delaware with acres of open space directly abutting my tiny yard. The woods are a mix of native species - oak, maple, black walnut, fringe tree, pines and the Delaware state tree, American Holly. The trees are huge, fully-leafed and full of birds. We have 6 ponds here where insect-eating birds nest. I can sit outside for hours and never see a mosquito. The soil in the wooded area is dark and rich, due to decades of leaves composting back into the soil. By contrast, many neighbors have had to buy “food” for small trees they had planted in their yards. Robn: the lawn service that services our place leaves the grass clippings on the lawns. They say it is good for the lawns. Before I moved I was in a condo in East Haven and just about every day landscapers were at other properties nearby with all their noisy equipment. I had a nearly bare patch of grass the size of a large beach towel with a shrub in the middle and the landscapers cut it with a huge riding mower. Paul Saubestre: I agree - why use leaf blowers other than in the fall when leaves fall off the trees?
In my area, central Delaware, a big new high school was built a few years ago - the large front lawn is a “natural” area with native plants and wildflowers and is only mowed once after the plants produce seeds. There are large signs that say “enjoy our natural area” which explains the lack of mowing to passersby.
Another suggestion, don’t rake leaves. Instead run over them with a lawnmower to mulch them into tiny bits which will feed the lawn naturally and make your yard much healthier. Or rake them into a compost pile with your fruit and vegetable scraps and then use the resulting compost on your garden and lawn. You’ll have an incredibly healthy plant life and you’ll generate less trash to be hauled away.
Almost all blowers are awful. The gas-powered are the worst (try walking or biking by and getting a swallow of the gas in your face/nose/mouth). They are horribly and unnecessarily disruptive - by blowing the dirt and the bad stuff - that live in the dirt - up to our open windows, and into our homes and sinuses. The noise sucks, too. I use a rake and a broom. Let's encourage our landscapers to do the same. We all need to accept that some leaves and cut grass are okay to have on our grounds.
Landscapers get payed per house. How do u expect to take every home that they do every day. Get serious. Your raking one house. They are doing 20 to 30 houses a day so tell me how are they going to rake every house everyday. Why no one talking about that nasty smell that comes from the school buses that’s stink up everything
It’s real funny that the city always crying broke and wants to ban the gas blowers. How are they going to replace all the back pack blowers that the parks department use. All the push behind blowers, the blowers that are on the John Deere tractors. Does the city have that money to replace all the equipment that the parks dept have. I don’t think so.
All the landscapers in the entire state of Connecticut should offer mowing services ONLY! Have all these people whining about gas powered blowers go out and purchase the electric blowers (which require charging) and go electric blow all of their neighbors lawns after the landscaper is finished. How do you rake a driveway or sidewalk? Better yet maybe the landscapers in New Haven should charge triple and take the same time cleaning up 1 customers yard that it takes to clean 3. Whats next, banning gas powered mowers..trimmers? Banning gas powered vehicles in New Haven maybe? There are a ton of dangers to our enviroment and I know we have to start somewhere, but lawn care, in MY opinion, is not it
"NHPS Teacher Jun 4, 2022 8:31 am Teens literally murder each other in the streets and bring guns to vigils. This is not important enough to be discussed. Gun shots and sirens are much louder." THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS. The irony of most democrats/liberals. Assuming their problems are everyone's. The priorities of people should be ashamed. Noise? Are you kidding me? How many kids have been killed by violence in the last decade in this city? How many people are struggling to feed their familes? How many students are being left behind and struggling in schools?
I'm confused, people are upset over leaf blowers? Leaf blowers kill people? All of the crime (car jackings, murders, domestics) that happen in this city, teens and kids with NOTHING constructive to do because the city cut lifelines and resources to those programs, and THIS is what the debate is??? IMO some people seem to be overly sensitive to the noise of leaf blowers, do they really disrupt your dinner or sleep in the morning? We live in NEW HAVEN, it's not that quiet that the mere sound of a leaf blower can disrupt your life. What's next, are you going to come for our lawn mowers too? For those of us that maintain our own property, and for those that own lawn care businesses, this talk of a ban or phase out, is ridiculous. If I don't maintain my lawn and the grass curbside, the city will fine me. If the issue is that the leaf blowers pollute the air, by way of exhaust and blowing around dust and possible mold spores and toxins, an electric leaf blower will have a trade off of pollution. Maybe the exhaust that is emitted isn't as bad, but the production of the batteries will have a similar effect on the environment. Please leave our lawn equipment alone.
This is what we have to waste our money on. These so called peaceful activist like to harass people who are just doing a job they are hired to do. Maybe the lady should go to her neighbor and yell at them. Which is not right either. If the go electric that won't be good enough it would have to be solar. I would love to see what this lady's yard looks like. Maybe she does nothing. we have more important things to worry about. Get a hobby or go volunteer somewhere.
I dont believe anyone disagrees it is not a step in the right direction to reduce our carbon footprint and to reduce noise. The issue is developing a comprehensive plan to move in that direction. Even the car makers have a transiton plan to move away from internal combusiton engines built on a gradual phase out. Interesting how leaf blowers have been singled out while other gas powered devices (generators,snowblowers) have not been mentioned. Lastly, as others have pointed out, electric devices have been considered the panecea for gas powered devices but bring many other environmental concerns (battery creation, storage,disposal,etc) that have not been addressed. Remember when nuclear power was considered 'clean' energy?
You know what? It's okay to care about stuff other than crime! I hate crime and poverty in New Haven, but I also think we should be forward-thinking about all sorts of things, including blowing crap from the streets into our yards, homes, and sinuses. I'll say that another miserable thing here is: littering. I'm shocked when I see people littering. Is that okay? Can I complain about that, too? Don't drag people as "Libs" who don't care about "more important issues." I think all of us care about all of it, but we take these issues one at a time, as needed.
I just hate the damn noise. It is by far the consistently loudest noise in my neighborhood. I'd say we should set a decibel level requirement and enforce it, but there isn't much law enforcement going on right now (yep, I could also go on a rant about the psychotic drivers and lack of enforcement of basic traffic laws too). So I'm ready to ban these things on a number of fronts: my damaged hearing, environmental trauma (to pollinators, birds, nitrogen-deprived flora, and the humans that have to live among them), meta-environmental trauma (no thanks to any more fossil fuels wherever feasible), and because a simple ban could actually be enforceable. Go blow the leaves around the yards in the suburbs if you need to pay off the gas machines, but get out of my town. NIMBY power!
Hahaha... apparently all other problems have been solved. People want every piece of debris removed by their lawn service...can't do it efficiently without the compact power of a gasoline engine. Rakes?!? no is paying for the time it takes to rake a lawn. It is ludicrous to think that a lawn services can run all day on batteries... how many batteries would they need to work all day? How will they charge them on the truck? A generator? haha... The manufacturers could increase noise suppression, but that would likely increase price and reduce performance making their product less desirable. Legislation would be required so that all leaf blowers would have the same requirement, so good luck with that. We can't do anything to stop children being murdered... sorry about the few hours of inconvenient noise on your Saturday afternoon. Suck it up and go rake that lawn if it's bothering you so much.
If anyone's still paying attention...here's an article debunking the Facebook myth that EVs create more pollution than ICVs. Bottom line " lifetime carbon emissions from EVs were lower, even when battery production emissions were included." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/06/09/fact-check-electric-vehicles-emit-less-carbon-over-life-than-gas-cars/9900644002/
I work for the new haven park’s dept and the city is always crying there’s no money. We haven’t had a raise since 2019 because there’s no money. So how is new haven going to replace all the back pack blowers, all the push behind blowers, the toro 325 sit down with blowers on it,and the John Deere with the blower on it if new haven is crying broke. The dept haven’t had a raise in 3 yrs so imagine how is the city going to replace all the blowers. It’s not!! Cost to much for the city. Good luck on trying to get this passed. Once the alders see how much it’s going to cost the tax payers to change over all the depts blowers over they going to say it’s not in the budget.
Thank you for your response on my last request. Can you please give me an… more »
Someone put Palm trees and roped off part of the City Right of way… more »
©2005 – 2022 New Haven Independent