From the West

 News from California:

Leaf Blower Issue Slated for Nov. 16  Presentation Before Orinda City Council

 http://lamorinda.patch.com/articles/leaf-blower-issue-slated-for-nov-16-presentation-before-orinda-city-council

Good Luck!

 

Leaf Blower Excess

Leaves in N. Ga. not yet blown.

Photo by Jack

 

Imagine autumn in New England. On a quiet fall day, one sits and watches the red and gold leaves swirl down to a softly gurgling brook. Cool, clean breezes refresh the soul.

Now, shift to Atlanta. As the first leaves of autumn fall from the oaks, panic grips the residents of apartment and condo complexes. There will be leaves in the parking lot. Leaves will clutter the space between our parked cars on the street. Even before the leaves fall, three, four, five workers rev up their blowers to max speed: 200 mph. Their instructions? leave not one leaf on the grounds, the walks or the street. Get rid of them! Of course there's no need to worry about where you blow them. If there get to be too many, we'll scoop them up in a tarp. But meanwhile, we'll just blow them until they aren't visible any more, or cleverly concealed in the ground cover.
Consider the results: at 200mph, the hot winds from the blowers lift not only the leaves, but enormous quantities of dirt. The dust and dirt rise as high as the rooftops of three story buildings and coat everything as they begin a slow descent. The hot wind destroys whatever grass there is and, week by week, kills the shrubs. Landscapes that are blown weekly, especially in times of drought or hot weather are bare, whatever fertile soil there was-- gone with the wind. All one needs to do is walk around the neighborhood of a complex that is blown to see the damage. In contrast to the healthy shrubs, green lawns, and blooming ground cover of all the neighborhood properties, the blown landscapes are dead. The difference is startling.

Consider this as well: those workers who spend their days blowing dirt and dust, including the lead filled dust of the street, the anti-freeze, the organic and inorganic compounds of car drippings, animal feces, mold, and allergens are very likely to suffer respiratory illness.  Though we are all aware of the city's infamous air pollution, many of us do little to prevent it. We drive SUVs and we blow our lawns dry with gasoline fumes that add significantly to the pollution. The price we are paying for anal retentive tidiness may be an insidious filth that coats our houses inside and out, and settles in our lungs and sinuses.

This activity is not confined to autumn, of course. Blowing is now a year 'round process. Weekly, workers gather armed with the latest, most powerful, loudest, and most fume spewing blowers possible. When asked what they are blowing in the dog days of summer, they reply, "debris." Of course there are also leaves- the same leaves that various companies blow around yards and into streets week after week, never bothering to pick them up. What could be more lucrative than charging a condo complex thousands per month to have a handful of low wage workers walk the property blowing it with fumes and hot air? Perhaps the scam wouldn't be so nasty if the blowers didn't pollute the already dirty air and rob us of quiet summer mornings in our yards or on our back porches.
 

My hope is that looking at the ordinances of over 400 progressive communities around the country that limit the use and kinds of blowers, might eventually bring us back to the good old days of quiet contemplation of the beauty of autumn leaves, and the peacefulness of summer mornings free of gasoline fumes and the roar of leaf blower engines.


About 400 cities and towns (click)  have banned or controlled blowers nationwide.

Jack Miller

Good suggestions from The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/05/its-time-for-a-moratorium-on-oil-itself/39789/

Lisa Margonelli - Lisa Margonelli is a writer on energy and environment. She spent four years and traveled 100,000 miles to write her book, "Oil On the Brain: Petroleum's Long Strange Trip to Your Tank."

Bio | All Posts | Books

 

Lisa Margonelli directs the New America Foundation's Energy Productivity Initiative, which works to promote energy efficiency as a way of ensuring energy security, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and economic security for American families. She spent roughly four years and traveled 100,000 miles to report her book about the oil supply chain, Oil On the Brain: Petroleum's Long Strange Trip to Your Tank, which the American Library Association named one of the 25 Notable Books of 2007. She spent her childhood in Maine where, during the energy crisis of the 1970s, her family heated the house with wood hauled by a horse. Later, fortunately, they got a tractor. The experience instilled a strong appreciation for the convenience of fossil fuels.

It's Time for a Moratorium on Oil Itself

May 2 2010, 9:54 AM ET | 

The oil spill in the Gulf is horrific and it's very likely it'll get worse. While locals get to work scrubbing the oiled birds with Dawn dish detergent,  a fracas will begin in Washington. Generally speaking this is an opera called "The Punishment," and for the last two major oil spills of great political  consequence (Santa Barbara in 1969 and the Exxon Valdez in 1989) it involved  a moratorium on drilling somewhere in the US. The problem with this, as I lay out in an op-ed in today's New York Times, is that we basically shift drilling and  its risks to other countries. (The figure that the Niger Delta, roughly the size of England, has suffered the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez of spilled oil every year since 1969 ought to make us cry.)

This time we need to use the political will generated by this really awful event to implement a comprehensive plan to reduce American dependence on oil.

Off the top of my head, here are a few possible places to start (and feel free to add your own
below).

We could begin to reduce oil dependence immediately with some of the measures suggested in this 2005 International Energy Agency report called Saving Oil In A Hurry. (Download a PDF here.)

A very diverse group (of which I am a recent member) called the Coalition for Mobility Choice has a 10-point plan to reduce oil dependence through various policies. Deron Lovaas of NRDC gave detailed testimony before a Senate Committee in March. (Download PDF here.) The basic package of policy changes he recommends could save 2 to 3 million barrels a day by 2020, and much more if we accelerated fuel economy standards for cars.

We could save even more if we started to use natural gas trucking, which has impressive numbers for both fuel savings and pollution in this Center For  American Progress study.

What would we gain by implementing the Oil Consumption Reduction Act? (Got something catchier? Please post below.)

First, we'd stop the financial hemorrhage that oil dependence causes. Today we'll spend well more than $1.07 billion on oil. And prices are up over Tom Kloza's estimates of $2.81 to $2.885 today.

Secondly, we'll reduce the risk of spills, accidents, and blowouts that every gallon carries.

Thirdly, we'll reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by the burning oil.

Fourthly, we'll reduce the pollution, and the costs of dealing with the health effects of breathing oil pollution. See last week's report from the American Lung Association.

Fifthly, we might reduce the amount of time we spend in traffic. (Los Angeles commuters spend nearly two work weeks sitting in traffic every year. Bizarre.)

Sixthly, we'll reduce the amount of energy we spend defending oil shipping lanes and other oil related military projects.

Seventhly, we'll increase our competitiveness by increasing our ability to turn energy into GDP. We'll also start markets for energy efficient and clean technologies.

Eighthly, because times of national crisis are priceless opportunities to air a pet peeve: we could ban gasoline-powered leaf blowers, which consume 200 million gallons of gasoline a year. (Go to Table 2.10 in ORNL's Transportation Energy Data Book to geek out on energy consumption by lawn and garden equipment.)

Showing 5 comments

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  candide08 1 hour ago

  1 person liked this.

  Whether this turns out to be negligence or an accident almost does not matter.
  "Drill, baby, drill" is dead.
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  Syz 1 hour ago

  Just like "too big to fail" is now dead?
  
  Never underestimate the ability of the government to throw common sense under the bus to make way for corporate cronyism.
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  candide08 16 minutes ago in reply to Syz

  1 person liked this.

  Your points are valid, Govt rarely uses common sense. Even this incident shows the lack of common sense in Govt.
  
  Norway and Brazil require that ALL offshore oil rigs have special valves designed to prevent just the type of disaster we are experiencing now. This would be the least, IMO, that should be done.
  
  The valves only cost $500,000. In comparison to the clean-up cost even BP MUST wish that they had them in place. In 2002 and 2003 when legislation was proposed to make installation of these valves a a legal requirement for offshore oil rigs here in the United States the proposal got defeated in Congress.
  
  No doubt the result of the oil lobby had a key role in this. Having oil industry allies like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney didn't hurt either. We now bear the consequences of not having these safeguards.
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  Jack Miller

  The ban on gas powered leaf blowers that really blow nothing but dirt and debris most of the year is long overdue. The noise and air pollution these gadgets cause is contributing to many health problems as well as wasting gasoline. Banning them will raise the ire of so called landscapers who rake in huge profits from the unskilled labor of walking around with a loud blower on.
  Join a group that works to oppose their use: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=154069...
  or http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=588408...

   

the Scourge of the Earth?

http://www.re-nest.com/re-nest/at-on/at-on-leaf-blowers-the-scourge-of-the-earth--048270

AT on ... Leaf Blowers (the Scourge of the Earth?)

Please excuse me while I take this moment to rant (I've had a little too much coffee).
Is there anything worse than a leaf blower?
Well, yes, I suppose there are a few things. But not many. They're loud; they rather uselessly blow things (dirt, leaves, small defenseless animals) from one place to another; they do what a rake does, but not as well; and they can effortlessly ruin a lunchtime trip to a residential park (a lunchtime trip one person was very much looking forward to).

All sarcasm aside, leaf blowers ... er ... blow.
According to Grist, leaf blowers "emit more than 2.6 million tons of carbon-dioxide each year in the U.S. And each year they burn enough fuel to fill 6.4 million oil barrels." That's nothing compared to what we emit with our cars -- but it's still something.
A lot of cities have taken up bans against them because of noise pollution and pollution pollution -- according to this ancient post at EcoGeek, Palo Alto, Ca enacted such a ban in 2005, which is ironic considering the fact that Palo Alto is the exact location where I encountered said rogue lunchtime leaf blower.
Does anything bother you the way leaf blowers are bothering me today? What's your nomination for environmental scourge of the earth?
image via theworldscreams; sxc.hu

Aloha

Lawmakers Consider Leaf Blower Ban

Critics Call Leaf Blower Noise Obnoxious

POSTED: 5:38 pm HST February 18, 2010

UPDATED: 5:54 pm HST February 18, 2010

HONOLULU -- The Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday will deliberate a bill to prohibit the use of gas leaf blowers.Critics say leaf blowers are a noisy menace. They say the machines awaken them on weekends and annoy them with oily fumes. Earlier this month, the Senate Environment Committee approved the bill. Environment Committee Chairman, Senator Mike Gabbard, says the goal is to reduce noise and air pollution. The bill exempts government agencies from leaf blower restrictions. But it prohibits any kind of leaf blowing gas or electric on state holidays. The State Health Department opposes the leaf blower ban saying it will be difficult to enforce

Copyright 2010 by KITV.com All rights reserved.

will the noise ever stop?

http://www.smdp.com/Articles-c-2010-01-07-67431.113116_New_Web_site_tracks_leaf_blower_violations.html