The Leaf Blower Ban Will Do Nothing But Hurt Small Landscaping Businesses

It’s amazing to me what people will complain about, organize and fight against in the Hamptons. For me, the leaf blower ban is on that list.

Here’s the complaint. People need landscaping, landscapers use leaf blowers that make noise, the noise is too loud, hence we should make leaf blowers illegal. Oh, and since they run on gas, they are apparently too risky to use because they are bad for the environment.

Leaf blowers are a hugely important tool for landscapers, they save a tremendous amount of time and they aren’t used just for leaves, they are also used to clear decks and yards of debris and as an overall tool, they are pretty much just as important as a lawnmower and a pick up truck for a landscaping business. The landscaping business is among the top most important businesses in the Hamptons for locals. It’s difficult work, it’s competitive, the equipment is very expensive and it requires an extremely intense effort to keep the business going.

But the leaf blowers are too loud. Not my problem, get an electric one.

Okay, I’m all about going electric, if the technology works, but it doesn’t work for leaf blowers at a commercial level. Not only are they expensive, they take too long to charge and they simply are not as powerful.

Is the noise really that bad? I don’t think I’ve ever said to myself, “Man, that leaf blower up the street is terrible, I wish they would make those things illegal.”

I honestly didn’t even know this was an issue with ANYONE until I read about it in the news. Apparently, in all of America, 500 places have banned leaf blowers, that doesn’t mean that we should too, that means that there are 500 places in America that need to relax for a minute and realize that all they are doing is hurting small business owners who by the way, have a hard enough time being local as it is these days.

Plenty of manmade noises bother me. Motorcycles are kind of annoying. Tractor trailers are kind of annoying and they use gasoline.

ILLEGAL.

When I’m at the beach and I hear a dog barking, it infuriates me, those people should be ticketed!

ILLEGAL! THAT’S WHAT I SAY!

While we’re at making things illegal that are slightly annoying because THAT MAKES SENSE (eye roll); I don’t really like the way pick-up trucks look that have pool equipment hanging out of them and how they have their phone numbers slapped on the side of them in an attempt to create more business for themselves and feed their families. It hurts my eyes, and pick-ups don’t have good gas mileage so let’s make those illegal too while we’re at it.