This report focuses on the issues behind the push to vote yes on the leaf-blower bylaw. A separate story about those favoring reversing the bylaw was published July 2.
No ballot-question committee or fund-raising effort directs those seeking a yes vote in the July 19 special election, so the public sees only signs pushing a no vote. In two websites, their names tell you the route they are taking — We Prefer Rakes and It’s Not About the Noise.
The former is a Facebook page from Carol Band, the chief Town Meeting proponent of the not-yet-approved bylaw limiting leaf-blower use that is the target of the ballot question. The latter is a series of reports pointing to environmental dangers leaf blowers stir up.
Band was not available for this report. In town was Jeremy Marin, a first-year Precinct 16 Town Meeting member who presented the case in May documenting the role leaf blowers play is dispersing pollutants.
Compromiser Radochia sticks to guns
How will the leaf-blower bylaw be enforced?
Interview with bylaw proponent
On a sunny July 5 in his backyard, near his luxurious vegetable garden, Marin said: “I can’t tell you how many came up to me and said they did not know that.”
Jeremy Marin in his garden.What many may not have known has been spelled out since Town Meeting in a series of blog posts aimed at providing factual information about issues surrounding lawn maintenance.
Beyond the periodic blasts of a gas-powered leaf blowers, which annoy some and is the sound of a livelihood to landscapers, are chemicals used to encourage lawn growth as well as the pollutants that blowers send airborne.
“To say the issue is only about noise is to ignore key issues involved,” Marin said, adding later: “It’s invisible, so we let it go.”
Not About Noise blog posts
Marin, aided by Precinct 3 Town Meeting member Adam Auster, try to make the hidden problems visible in a series of reports.
“The greatest problem with leaf blowers,” The introduction says, “is not noise but dust, laden with allergens, carcinogens, and toxins spread high and far by the blowers’ powerful engines.”
Links on that page drill down to the wind leaf blowers generate, the unwelcome delivery device for spreading lead and other chemicals found in Arlington lawns.
“People are well within their rights to use these and other chemicals on their lawns, in their homes, etc.,” the conclusion says, “but that right ends at property boundaries — you cannot spread these chemicals on your neighbor’s yard. Leaf blowers violate this, spreading these potentially hazardous items across the neighborhood.”
The push to promulgate this message began on the Arlington email list about three weeks after landscaper interests collected enough signatures to call for a special election.
Some criticism on email list
Publication of the blog link was met with some criticism. Points raised included claims that the language is “scary,” that air coming from a leaf blower rushes out faster than a tornado and possibly questionable documented sources.
As to the latter, one poster said the quotation that “homeowners use 10 times as much pesticide per acre as farms” came from the Environmental Protection Agency, which referenced a homespun journal.
Asked about that, Marin provided the EPA citation as well as one from SafeLawns, a blog by Paul Tukey, a landscaper who employs what he sees as safe measures.
A poster also suggested that Marin talk to his neighbor. “I did that,” he said during the interview.
“The issue is not just with immediate neighbors,” he said. “It’s about walking with your kids to school, passing leaf blowers on the way …. All our neighbors breathe the same air.”
A better law down the road?
As to the criticism that the Town Meeting bylaw is poorly crafted and asked whether could be an opportunity after the election to improve the legislation, Marin responded with a long pause. Then he returned to the idea of “pouring pollutants on our lawns.”
He referred to the big industry that supports desires for “PGA-quality lawns” by “taking these chemicals and spreading them around.”
As to whether It’s Not About the Noise uses frightening language, he said the blog “quotes from the data … from the producers’ descriptions.”
With regard to rights, he said: “We can all do what we want on our own property. The problem arises when what someone else does affects his property.”
In response to the economic impact of the bylaw, Marin cited ways that regulation now aims to protect the consumer — from catalytic converters in cars to limits on lead to limits on sulfur dioxide.
“We could eliminate all of these limits,” he said, “… and pay the consequences.”
Background
Marin, 41, has operated his consulting company, Marin Strategies, for five years from his Arlington home. It provides services to nonprofit environmental groups and political organizations.
Known in Arlington as the energy behind A-HEET, which does volunteer weatherization work on homes, he has worked previously for a variety of environmental and political campaigns.
Born in Peabody, reared in Lexington, he has lived in Arlington since 2003. He has a wife and a 5-year-old.
This story was first published wednesday, July 11, 2012.
