In Baltimore City, leaves will continue to fall from trees every year, but soon, people will have to find another way to move them from the ground to a pile in the yard that some kid will want to jump into, because the City Council, by a vote of 10-5, voted to ban gas-powered leaf blowers. By this December 15, all city employees and contractors will have to stop using them, and residents will have a phase-out period: Landscape companies and residents can use gas-powered blowers between Oct. 15 and Dec. 15 of 2025 and 2026, and then they'll have to go electric or battery as the ordinance goes into effect year-round.
Supporters of the bill offered this statement from the National Audubon Society:
In one hour, a commercial gas-powered leaf blower emits as much pollution as driving a car for 1,100 miles and four times as much as commercial lawn mowers.
The only leaves I handle anymore are romaine, but in the day, I fiddled around with a gas blower or two. They are devilish little machines, and the wee two-cycle motors wanted more TLC than I felt like devoting to them, so I switched to an electric, which would have been great if I had hired someone to drag the cord around and keep me, and it, unentangled. I know they make great little battery-powered blowers now.
Speaking of "blow," neighbors have actually come to blows over someone's whiny Husqvarna at 7 AM on a Saturday.
Speaking of Husqvarna, 74% percent of people buying them only chose that brand so they could go back to work on Monday saying, "Yeah, we had a mess o'leaves this year, but that Husqvarna is a burly machine, and Junior and I had them cleared up by the time "It's Academic" came on."
And the others in the office crooning, "Ohhhhhh! He got a Husqvarna!"
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