WHY LEAF BLOWERS
SHOULD BE BANNED

• Leaf blowers are excessively noisy. Sacramento's city code states: "Every person in the city is entitled to live in an environment free from excessive, unnecessary or offensive noise levels." [66.101 (b)] The City should live up to its promise.

• No one has the moral right to pollute our environment. This is just as true of the audible environment as it is of our rivers, land, and air. Efficiency and lower cost do not justify polluting activities--if they did we would have no environmental protections of any sort.

• Noise interferes with communication, sleep, and work productivity. It causes stress and impairs quality of life. For the retired (15 percent of our population) and those who work at home the piercing whine from leaf blowers is particularly disruptive.

• Blower-generated air pollution, particularly from gas blowers with two-stroke engines, is so significant that the California Air Resources Board and the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District discourage use of these machines. Dust clouds raised by blowers make walking and bicycling unpleasant--even hazardous--especially for those with asthma, allergies, other respiratory problems, or contact lenses.

• Leaf blowers endanger the health of their operators. The noise can cause hearing loss and the dust and exhaust emissions can cause respiratory ailments.

• Leaf blowers damage plants, terrify pets, and create friction between neighbors.

As Robert Alex Baron says in The Tyranny of Noise:
"Noise is not the price of progress. Noise is not the inevitable by-product of technology. Noise is the price you and I pay for greed and insensitivity, and our own indifference."

20 California cities have banned blowers:

"...it shall be unlawful for any person within the City to use or operate any portable machine powered with a gasoline engine used to blow leaves, dirt, and other debris off sidewalks, driveways, lawns, landscape areas or other surface." (Los Altos, CA)

"It shall be unlawful for any person within the City to use or operate any portable machine powered with a gasoline engine, or gasoline powered generator, to blow leaves, dirt, and other debris off sidewalks, driveways, lawns, or other surfaces." (Santa Barbara, CA)

"No person shall operate any motorized leafblower within the City." (Santa Monica, CA)

California cities that have banned blowers include Belvedere, Berkeley, Carmel, Claremont, Del Mar, Laguna Beach, Los Altos, Los Angeles, Malibu, Mill Valley, Piedmont, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood. These cities have found satisfactory alternatives to noisy leaf blowers--so can Sacramento!

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CQS Rebuttal to the CLCA Position on Leaf Blowers

CQS Response to 3/31/98 letter to the editor of the Palo Alto Daily News about leaf blowers

Citizens for a Quieter Sacramento: