The battle against leaf blowers: Sea Pines has a new policy on the equipment. What is it?
The critics of noisy leaf blowers on Hilton Head Island have scored a victory in their long-running campaign to eliminate — or at least mitigate — the loudest of the gas-powered equipment in Sea Pines.
The board of directors for Sea Pines’ Community Services Associates voted last month to approve a new policy that will prohibit landscaping companies from using commercial grade leaf blower equipment that operates above a sound level of 75 dBA (A-weighted decibels) while in the gated community.
The town government already has an islandwide ban on landscaping maintenance that generates noise levels greater than 95 dBA at the property line of where such work is occurring.
The Sea Pines policy will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023 and will cover “any individual or entity engaged in landscape maintenance or cleanup or removal for hire.”
There are a few exemptions to the policy, including for maintenance on golf courses and cleanup at residential properties following a major storm, among other things.
The policy also does not completely ban the use of gas-powered leaf blowers, which have long been a cause for consternation in Sea Pines, the idyllic south-end community known for the Heritage golf tournament.
“We ... recognize that many communities are now banning gas leaf blowers as being environmentally unfriendly,” said Larry Movshin, chair of the CSA board of directors, during a Nov. 16 meeting. “We’re not prepared to do that yet. We haven’t studied the issue enough to know what the impacts will be on leaf blowers used in our community. But that should also be a goal.
“I understand there will be ... people in the community who think we failed. I ask them to (not look) at the glass as being half empty, but as being half full, with the goal of filling it up over the next several years with an even tighter standard.”
The board aims to eventually restrict the use of commercial grade leaf blowers with “manufacturers’ ratings over 65 dBA,” once the quieter equipment becomes more widely available.
Board members approved a resolution that says “CSA desires to further reduce the environmental effects of all leaf blowers used in the Sea Pines community, as soon as possible, but no later than the end of calendar year 2025.”
The battle against leaf blowers in Sea Pines has raged for years, according to previous reporting from The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Mary Carol White, for example, raised the issue at a meeting in Sea Pines in 2019, the newspapers reported.
And Gene Henry, of Atlanta, bemoaned the noisy equipment in a 2015 letter to the editor.
“I think Sea Pines should put a leaf blower logo on its website as part of its brand,” Henry wrote. “These things need to be banned immediately.”
