Leaf Blowers And Water Pollution
. . . It isn't pollution that's harming the environment.
It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it . . .
 Danforth Quayle, 44th United States Vice President

This picture shows a typical urban street in a California city. This city has anti-dumping ordinances: above every drain in the city streets is a notice reading,

No Dumping! Flows To Bay!

The lawn of the adjacent house is freshly mowed. The lawn clippings (which should be left on the lawn for fertiliser) have been blown into the street, in blatant deliberate violation of anti-dumping ordinances!

“But this does not look like a Big Deal”, we hear you say . . .

But of course, that “just one house not a Big Deal” thinking is the beginning of the slippery slope. . . .from local and innocuous to state-wide and polluted.

Later that winter day, seasonal rains would have washed those lawn clippings into the drains, from where they would either clog up the drains, or eventually end up (along with fertiliser residues, herbicides, and pesticides) in the waters of San Francisco Bay.

And you might be right for just this one house. Now consider that there are about seven-hundred-thousand leaf blowers in the Bay Area, and the problem starts to look real.

There are probably about three pounds of clippings on the street in this picture. Multiply three pounds of clippings times seven-hundred-thousand leaf blowers, and you get more than a thousand tons of debris blown down drains every day of the year . . .

And then further multiply three pounds of clippings times three million or more leaf blowers in California, and now you get four-and-a-half thousand tons of debris blown down drains every day of the year . . .

Repeat these scenarios for every California household that contracts so-called “gardening” services, and you can see a potentially serious water pollution issue.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Regional Water Quality Control Plant prints a brochure entitled Cars Pollute Water Too! While we may partly agree with this sentiment, we can state quite confidently that cars were not responsible for moving the lawn clippings from the adjacent house, into the street, and eventually into the drains.

The Regional Water Quality Control Plant brochure also advocated you Use Your Car Less! We agreed, and also asked them to add the advice Get Rid Of Your Noise Bazooka!

Contact Office Of The Governor
The Obvious Conclusion . . .

A clear path to reducing or eliminating this abusive water pollution problem is to
exercise your choice and eliminate leaf blowers from California.

 

This Web Page Updated 2007 September 27