Palo Alto looks to crack down on gas

Nearly two decades after Palo Alto adopted a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers in residential areas, both the appliance and the public opposition to them remain as loud as ever.

In 2022 alone, the city had received about 450 service requests pertaining to the noisy devices, according to a new report from the Department of Planning and Development Services, up from 242 in 2021 but roughly aligned with the number of requests in 2018 and 2019. And the City Council periodically hears from residents who bemoan the hazardous impacts of gas-powered leaf blowers on health and the environment, as well as the city's haphazard response.

Strikingly, between 75% and 90% of the requests in any given year come from the top 10 service requesters, according to the report, a figure that points to the city's chronic failures to address the problems, even if they are identified and reported.

Last year, more than 200 people signed a petition led by Helene Grossman, a leading advocate of strengthening enforcement of the city's ban on gas-powered leaf blowers, which has been on the books since 2000. In May, Grossman requested that the council expand public education and a trade-in program that would offer gardeners a gas-powered leaf blower with a rebate for an electric one. At a public meeting, she recited portions of emails she had received from several residents who were complaining about the seemingly ever-present fumes and noise. One was from a writer whose child has asthma and who had trouble breathing near leaf blowers.

"I get lots and lots of emails from people who are very upset about leaf blowers in the city," Grossman told the council.

Barry Katz, one of many local residents to advocate for improving enforcement of leaf blowers in recent years, told this news organization that the problem became more pronounced during the early days of the pandemic, when many people began to work from home.

"This just became an intolerable situation," Katz said.

To date, however, the city's enforcement efforts have been mostly futile. Part of that has to do the nature of the violation — by the time code enforcement comes around, the gardener and their leaf blower are usually gone. Another part, however, has to do with local law. After receiving a report of a leaf blower violation, the city sends a letter to the property owner and then follows up with a site visit a few weeks later in an attempt to verify the violation, according to the staff report. More often than not, the report notes, staff is unable to validate the violation and the case is closed.

On the off-chance that the violation is observed, the city sends a notice citing the violation and informing the property owners that they need to take corrective action. Validating either compliance or violations is difficult because it requires three consecutive site visits and enforcement officials can't be certain when the leaf blowing will next occur. In the highly unlikely event that a citation is issued, it amounts to $100 for the first violation, with escalations to $150 and $300 for the second and third, respectively. The new report notes that aside from three citations that had been issued within the past six weeks, staff is "not aware of any other gas-powered leaf blower citations being issued."

"The regulatory framework in the City's municipal code makes it difficult to observe and cite the gas-powered leaf blower operator — the code does not allow issuance of an immediate citation with the first observed violation," the report states.

Now, the council is hoping to change that. With momentum against gas-powered leaf blowers picking up across the state, the council is preparing to approve on Monday a series of changes that would add fuel to the city's enforcement efforts.

One change would abolish an existing policy that requires enforcement officers to issue a "notice of violation" to the leaf-blowing scofflaw and give them a chance to come into compliance before they get a citation. The new law would empower the enforcement officer to issue a citation immediately when they observe someone using a gas-powered leaf blower in a residential neighborhood.

Another change would raise the fines to $250 for the first violation and to $500 and $1,000 for second and third violations, respectively. This, according to staff, will bring the violation in alignment with misdeeds such as littering and smoking in restricted areas.

The revised law would also specify that it's the property owner, rather than the operator of the leaf blower, who is liable for the violation. The city will thus be able to hold property owners responsible for "knowingly permitting the use of gas-powered leaf blowers by an 'operator' on their residential property," according to the staff report.

"With this change, upon a code enforcement officer observed violation, a warning would be issued to the property owner that puts them on notice that they are permitting an operator to use a gas-powered leaf blower on their property. If an officer observes this a second time, the property owner could be cited," the report states.

Palo Alto, which adopted its ban in 2005, isn't the only city that has taken a stance against these noisy appliances. Menlo Park, which saw its original ban on the appliance overturned by voters in a 1998 referendum, is preparing to start once again enforcing its prohibition in July 2024. Los Altos banned them in 1991, becoming the first city in the area to do so.

The movement has also spread across the state thanks in part to Assembly Bill 1346, legislation by Assembly member Marc Berman, that directs the California Air Resources Board to adopt regulations for banning new "small off-road engines" (a category that includes gas-powered leaf blowers) by 2024. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law in October 2021.

In addition to setting new rules for landscapers, Palo Alto is switching its own leaf blowers from gas to electric. According to staff, the Community Services Department, which oversees parks and open spaces, already uses battery-powered backpack blowers most of the time, though it makes exceptions in areas where the equipment isn't strong enough to remove debris or plant material, according to staff. Public Works crews currently have a mix of gas-powered and electric leaf blowers, the report states, though it is poised to replace all handheld gas-powered leaf blowers this year.

Katz said the proposed moves are a step in the right direction, particularly the city's determination that it's the property owners, not the gardeners, who are liable for violations. Behind most of the efforts that he has participated in, there is a strong desire not to penalize the gardeners, who he said are in most cases working for someone else. And, as a practical matter, they are harder to penalize because they don't stay at the location for too long.

"Gardeners are gone in a few minutes — they mow, they blow and they drive off, trying to get to as many jobs as possible," Katz said. "Housing and apartment buildings aren't going anywhere. It's much easier and ethically reasonable to target the property owners."

He observed that the situation has quieted down somewhat since last summer, a welcome trend that may be related to the recent wave of citizen advocacy and the growing publicity around the issue. Most, though not all, of the gardeners he sees these days have switched to electric leaf blowers, he said.

New state regulations may have accelerated the trend. And it probably didn't hurt that the city restored last year a code enforcement officer position that was slashed at the onset of the pandemic. But whether this newfound era of quieter yards persists remains for Katz an open question.

"Palo Alto has a history of coming down on this and it gets better and backing off and it gets worse," Katz said. "It's gone up and down and up and and now it's up. We may be in a lull now, but it's probably not enough to say the problem is solved."