Staff report
While Florida is prohibiting its towns and cities from banning gas-powered leaf blowers, Delray Beach officials hope they’ve got another way of giving residents a break from the roar of those machines.
Instead of banning the blowers themselves, the city is considering changing its noise ordinance to limit how loud the leaf blowers — or any other lawn equipment, for that matter — can be. It may also look at limiting the hours of operation for both electric and gas-powered leaf blowers.
It’s a Hail Mary, but anybody who has had a quiet morning disrupted by 115 decibels of leaf blower is looking for any relief.
When the crowd at the Beach Property Owners Association meeting on March 31 heard about the new restriction on banning leaf blowers, there was a collective groan.
“When we realized that the leaf blower preemption was going to take effect, we talked to people in the city about using the noise ordinance to potentially start citing people,” association President Hal Stern said.
State Sen. Lori Berman, D-Boca Raton, addressing the BPOA and taking questions, said, “That’s a smart potential way around it.”
Mayor Tom Carney said he wants to take a look. The city just invested in five sound meters at $7,000 each. Carney has long said leaf blower noise — and noise from other lawn equipment — is one of the top complaints he hears from residents.
Delray Beach’s current noise ordinance, Carney said, looks at sustained periods of 10 minutes in order to trigger enforceability. “So we may have to look at that again,” he said.
Carney called the leaf blower ban “yet another thing coming from Tallahassee, which we have to deal with locally.”
“It just makes it difficult for us to try to control what goes on in our own neighborhoods.”
The new law, passed by the state Legislature this year and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in March, takes effect July 1.
During the bill signing in Sebring, DeSantis called it a win for personal choice.
“If you want to use different stuff, fine, it’s a free country. But I like the gas powered better,” he said. “I just think it’s more reliable.”
The legislation was pushed by lobbyists for the powerful Florida Nursery, Growers and Landscape Association.
The new legislation will affect communities like the towns of Palm Beach and Juno Beach, which previously banned the gas-powered leaf blowers.
Juno Beach officials decided not to wait for July 1 to roll around. The town announced April 2, following the governor’s signing of the legislation, that it was immediately stopping enforcement of its ban.
“We understand that many residents transitioned to electric equipment in support of our local sustainability goals,” said the notice posted on the town’s website. “While the Town can no longer mandate the use of electric blowers, we continue to encourage the use of quieter, lower-emission alternatives whenever possible to maintain the peace and air quality of our neighborhoods.”
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