On Wednesday evening Rye City Council will hold a hearing and possibly a vote on further restrictions on gas leaf blowers. The Council is considering a further tightening for the use of the gas blowers by restricting the fall cleanup season from 10 weeks to six (moving from October 1 – December 15 to November 1 – December 15) and tightening the spring season from eight weeks to six weeks (moving from March 1 – April 30 to March 15 – April 30). The new rules would eliminate gas blowers on Sundays completely. Electric equipment is and will continue to be allowed at any time.
The debate continues to be whether electric lawn equipment including blowers is good enough and powerful enough to replace gas. The last time this was debated, council chambers had people saying the electric option was simply not good enough – the power of the machines and the life of the batteries simply fell short.
And of course our largest land stewards (municipal, schools, religious institutions, membership clubs, golf courses, hospital and retirement communities, cemeteries) remain exempt from these rules. But one large land steward in town has gone all in on electric and there are no regrets.
“The idea that these electric machines or the battery powered machines are not as efficient or or don’t work well is just nonsense, absolute nonsense,” Rye Town Park Director Russ Gold told MyRye.com. “It’s just not true.”
The park switched to all electric three or four years ago. They were using an external “mow and blow” service just like so many homeowners are larger land stewards still do. The park’s 62 acres include 28 acres of lawn. Now it is all cared for – cut, blown, trimmed and whacked – all with electric equipment.
The gas mow and blow service “no longer coincided with our mission to be more sustainable and more environmentally friendly,” said Gold.
The park invested in electric, commercial grade gear from Greenworks. The park now has four 60’’ zero radius riding mowers, leaf blowers, backpack and stick style weed whackers, line trimmers, hedge trimmers, pole saws, chain saws – all electric. And with the exception of the riding mowers that plug in to recharge, the other gear runs on rechargeable batteries.
“Initially people thought you’re never going to be able to do it because they’re not robust enough, they don’t last as long,” said Gold. “All those concerns were just unfounded. We are getting as much done, if not more, and the beauty of it is that we can do it on our schedule, and there’s no pollution involved. There’s no environmental damage happening. .. it’s proven to be just be a great success all around.”
Asked for his view on the shift to electric, City Engineer Ryan Coyne who oversees DPW said in a May 19th memo that “We find that the standard backpack leaf blower’s power matches that of traditional gas-powered machines.”
His view is slightly more cautious than Gold at Rye Town Park. Coyne said while batteries have more capacity today, they still fall short on some occasions.
“The technology that we have used is not at a point where we can rely solely on battery-powered equipment during those heavy use periods of spring and fall cleanups,” said Coyne in the memo. “We have found, however, that for most standard lawn maintenance tasks during late spring to early fall periods, the battery powered equipment meets the needs of the DPW.”
