NewCanaanite.com recently received the following letter. Send letters to editor@newcanaanite.com to have them published here.
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It’s a familiar summer experience in New Canaan. You’re sitting out on your patio, maybe talking with friends or just having a cup of tea or glass of wine by yourself. It’s a beautiful day, and you’re enjoying the green view, bird songs, and fresh air. But then someone starts up a gas leaf blower next door. The annoying buzz drowns out your conversation, and you have to raise your voice to be heard. Soon the fumes drift over, and the fresh breeze that you were enjoying is full of exhaust smoke. Your peaceful time of relaxation is ruined.
Actually, it’s worse than that. The high-decibel noise from gas leaf blowers has been proven to contribute to stress, heart disease, hypertension and strokes. Leaf blower motors burn only 70% of the gas they use, so the exhaust blowing over you is full of partly burned gasoline and oil. Every time you smell leaf blower fumes, you are breathing in potent carcinogens such as 1,3 butadiene, benzene and formaldehyde, as well as large amounts of PM2.5 particles. Using a gas leaf blower for one hour produces as much pollution as driving a car 1,100 miles, and all of that pollution blows over New Canaan neighborhoods. These risks are especially severe for children, who are more likely to be outdoors during the summer and are thus at greater risk from gas blower carcinogens.
This is not just a problem for well-off New Canaan residents. The greatest harm from gas leaf blowers is to the landscaping workers who use them. With the blowers on their backs all day, these workers are exposed to hearing damage from blower noise and to the serious long-term health effects of breathing in their fumes. These low-wage workers, mostly immigrants, have little or no power to avoid this work or demand the protective equipment they need.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Improvements in electric blowers have made them fully competitive with gas, especially because of their far lower operating costs. According to Stihl, a maker of both electric and gas blowers, the cost saving from using electric blowers quickly recovers their higher initial cost, often within months (see www.stihlusa.com/tools-calculators/battery-power-savings-calculator/). There is no economic reason to continue using gas blowers.
A growing number of communities in our area, including Norwalk, Westport, Greenwich and Stamford, have recognized the harm of gas blowers and enacted restrictions on their use. Some, such as Scarsdale, have banned them completely outside autumn leaf season. New Canaan is a laggard on this issue, and it is time for us to catch up. At a minimum, we should prohibit the use of gas leaf blowers from Memorial Day to mid-September, when they are not even necessary – electric blowers can easily handle the light work of blowing grass clippings during the summer.
So far our town government has justified its inaction by claiming that there is insufficient public support for any restriction. It is time to change that. Please contact the Town Council (TCDistribution@newcanaanct.gov) and let them know that it is time to for meaningful restrictions on gas leaf blowers. We have suffered this menace to our health and well-being for too long.
Jon Seel
Totally agree as do many people individually & environmental groups. Let’s step forward.
Thank-you for printing this letter. I couldn’t agree more. The market has changed, and there are now many cost effective and good alternatives to gas leaf blowers. Gas blowers are very noisy and take away the peace and calm that should be an essential part of living in New Canaan.
We are fortunate to live in a beautiful town that is home to birds, bees and other wildlife. We should not sacrifice our quality of life to these loud machines. I have written Town Council this morning and requested that they enact a ban on gas leaf blowers from Memorial Day to October so we can have our spring and summer seasons back.
Yes, this could not be more true. It’s very difficult to use any outdoor space on any day of the week or time of day due to constant blower use.
It’s not just the outdoors – try reading or having a Zoom call indoors when the yard next door has 2 or 3 blowers running. We do have regulations but they are weak and largely ignored.
I have to believe there are ways to find neighborly compromise on this issue and will contact the Town Council in support of doing so.
Who is the author?
It’s Jon Seel. I forgot to include it when the newsletter went out this morning oops.
100% agree. As a town we have done good work to steward our natural resources and this falls right in line with those initiatives. Note to town council sent! PS – probably an oversight but this letter to the editor appears to be unsigned?
Bravo! Let’s DO something.
If you must have a pristine lawn, use a mulching mower — leaves are nature’s fertilizer.
It’s time for New Canaan to get in gear and protect landscape workers and our environment.
10000%. It has always baffled me that while our neighboring towns impose various leaf blower bans, it is somehow considered impossible for our town government to even address it. And I get it, people like to have pretty lawns, so perhaps an outright ban is a bridge too far. But maybe we could collectively find a middle ground? Say, at least ban the part of leaf blowing I see everyday where lawn crews are just scattering grass clippings all over the street? Or maybe not before 8 am? Or in December? But the notion that there is insufficient public support seems a little nutty to me. On the contrary, I’ve never seen anyone break into a smile at the sound/smell of these little diesel jetpacks or comment on how much they love hearing them while walking around our many town green spaces. Let’s at least try something?
Just wrote the letter. I couldn’t agree more. There is never a time when I don’t hear leaf blowers in the warmer weather. New Canaan can and should do better!
My other idea, that I don’t know how to implement, would be for each neighborhood to have a specific day for landscape work-that way the noise wouldn’t be incessant.
I went for an impromptu walk in the peaceful, lovely Bristol Bird Sanctuary last week. However, about 5 minutes after arriving, a neighboring home’s landscaping crew arrived and had about 4 leaf blowers going simultaneously. It was mind-numbingly loud. Why are leaf blowers even being used in the spring and summer? Such a shame our town hasn’t enacted leaf blower restrictions, but hopefully this will be the year to start!
Switching from gas to electric is still symptom fixing. The larger the lawn, the greater the maintenance and the time spent mowing and blowing. Almost every new construction in town is clear cutting their lot and going full grassland with specimen trees. This is rewarded with a higher assessment and leads to a higher sale value to the construction company. P&Z should limit the clear cutting of lots based on acre zones.
We are just destroying our air, water and land. And to compound it further, the Trump administration has decimated the EPA. Restrictions on coal plants have been eased. National forests have been opened to lumber harvesting. Wetland protections have been narrowed. Offshore drilling permits have increased. All federal renewable energy projects have been defunded.
M-orons
A-re
G-overning
A-merica
Alrighty this thread is closed. Thank you.