The East Hampton Town Board concluded its 2020 meeting schedule last Thursday with public hearings on code amendments that would curb the use of gas and diesel-powered leaf blowers, opponents of which decry the ubiquitous landscaping equipment's noise and environmental pollution.
Just as the town's energy sustainability committee and Renewable Energy Long Island, as a consultant to the town, have urged the town board to fast-track electrification of vehicles, buildings, and as many other sectors of modern life as is possible, emission-free electric leaf blowers are poised to replace, over time, their noisier gas and diesel-powered counterparts, a tool landscapers consider essential. The energy sustainability committee has recommended codifying and mandating a phased transition to electric leaf blowers.
The town code would be amended to prohibit the use of any gas and diesel-powered leaf blowers between May 20 and Sept. 20. Those leaf blowers would be prohibited before 8 a.m. or after 6 p.m. on weekdays from Sept. 21 to May 19, and before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m. on Saturdays. Use would be prohibited on Sundays and federal or New York State holidays unless operated by a property owner or tenant, who could use them only between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Gas or diesel generators could not be used to power electric leaf blowers at any time.
Additionally, no walk-behind leaf blowers powered by gas or diesel could be used unless a property is greater than one acre. No more than two walk-behind, handheld, backpack, or any combination of leaf blowers of any power source could be used at any one time unless on a property greater than one acre.
The restrictions would apply to all properties in the town, including beach, golf, and tennis clubs, restaurants, and shopping centers.
In addition to the noise that opponents have called an act of aggression and a violation of people's peaceful enjoyment of their property, leaf blowers expose people to carcinogens like hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, whipped up in windstorms of pesticides, fertilizers, mold, lead, arsenic, mercury, fecal matter, and more. Opponents also cite leaf blowers' inordinate greenhouse gas emissions and inevitable fuel spills, which can enter groundwater.
The public hearings represent a long-sought victory for residents including Bob Casper of Northwest Woods in East Hampton, who several years ago co-founded a group called Ban the Blowers. "People deserve to be able to sit in their home and not listen to blowers all day," Mr. Casper told The Star in 2013. He likened leaf blowers to another bane of many residents' existence, helicopters. "You've got three people riding in it, and it's impacting thousands," he said at the time.
"Intelligent communities all over the country have banned the blowers," Mr. Casper told the board last Thursday, again denouncing their "detrimental sound invasion." He asked that the board "do the proper thing" for people "as well as for the birds and the bees."
The board had voted to combine three public hearings because, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said, "they all have something to do with each other." In addition to amendments to the code's chapters pertaining to noise and to landscaping and gardening, the third hearing was on a proposed amendment to designate the licensing review board to hear and determine any complaint or grievance regarding the landscaping and gardening chapter, and authorize it to suspend, modify, condition, limit, or revoke a home improvement contractor's license following a violation.
Several residents called to support, oppose, or propose modifications to the proposed legislation. The combined hearing was closed, and the board will accept written comment until two weeks after the meeting's transcript is posted on the town's website.
On the Year of Covid
Also at the meeting, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc reflected on the year as it draws to a close amid a second wave of Covid-19 infections, the latest development in a pandemic that upended life in 2020.
"I want to give special thanks to all those who have helped and come together to make us such a wonderful community, whether it's good times or bad," he said, recognizing front-line health care workers and first responders, essential workers including grocery clerks and truck drivers, "all community members who've donated their time and their wealth to help others," and town employees including his fellow members on the board and their staffs.
There is hope in the new year, he said, in the form of recently approved vaccines that are now being distributed in the first stage of the effort to inoculate the public against the novel coronavirus that has killed more than 318,000 Americans this year. 2020, he said, has "really been a difficult but remarkable journey."
