Letters

I am in sympathy with the discontent and dismay expressed with regard to the omnipresent use of blowers. This ubiquitous tool can be heard anywhere and everywhere at any time.  Its unregulated use has become a public nuisance.

However, the article in your November edition blatantly omits other major issues: 1) The harm done to insect and bird habitat. 2) The potential harm to personnel wielding these machines, their hearing and exposure to exhaust fumes. 3) The cumulative cost of destroying habitat and nourishment for small creatures, derived from and within leaf debris, i.e. environmental health, and also human health.

Complaints about noise from a purely human perspective completely miss the larger picture. The degree of manicured perfection expected in Florida, indeed across the country — whether on individual properties or in public spaces — has driven this mania of blowing off the slightest unwanted droppings or clippings that naturally fall from trees and shrubs, or from mowing.

This “debris” feeds the soil! The very plants shedding their leaves, buds, flowers, etc. in turn feed the environment. This is a natural cycle.

The landscape aesthetic we demand is counterproductive. To compensate for the absence of leaf cover on beds or under trees, additional costs are then incurred with an application of mulch.

The noise complaint is essentially a complaint about the environment we ourselves have created, to maintain an aesthetic we demand, without regard to consequences to nonhumans. 

This is unsustainable. Time to reconsider priorities.

The writer scoffs at the use of rakes! But not the use or cost of fossil fuels and their pollutants — aside from noise. Why not consider the benefits of raking leaf debris under hedges, onto beds and under trees? Eliminate the nasty trick of blowing this debris onto your neighbor’s property, or the expense of hauling it off to yet another landfill.

End the harm and its consequent costs, end the noise, and help bring about a return to healthier environmental outcomes and enjoy far greater tranquility. Demand the greater good! 

Some neighborhoods of Palm Beach have succeeded in banning blowers, allowing their regulated use only on larger properties with fewer immediate neighbors who must endure the noise. Doesn’t that sound like a great idea?

— Ann Flinn,
Delray Beach