Leaf-Blower Decibel Task Force Establishes Autumn Quiet Hours: 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Only

MAPLEWOOD — The Leaf-Blower Decibel Task Force issued its fall ruling Wednesday, establishing autumn quiet hours for gas-powered leaf blowers: operation permitted only between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., with a complete ban on Sundays “so help us, even the cordless ones before noon.”

The task force, formed after last October’s “Leaf Blower Wars” — in which dueling landscaping crews on opposite sides of Elm Street ran blowers simultaneously for six hours — measured peak noise at 97 decibels, “roughly equivalent to a chainsaw arguing with a motorcycle.”

“Nobody is anti-leaf-removal. Leaves must go; this is understood,” said task force chair Dr. Elaine Sorenson, an audiologist who volunteered after “being driven to action by a 7 a.m. blower outside my bedroom window.” The new rules also require commercial crews to post a “blowing schedule” sign 24 hours in advance, so neighbors may “plan naps, calls, and quiet contemplation accordingly.”

Landscapers pushed back. “Six hours a day, minus Sundays — you try clearing forty lawns in October with that window,” said crew owner Marcus Bell, who has switched two crews to industrial rakes “which the task force loves, but my guys’ shoulders do not.” Bell has applied for a hardship exemption, a process requiring a decibel log, three neighbor signatures, and what the application calls “a sincere paragraph.”

The task force will revisit the rules in spring, when, Sorenson noted dryly, “the blowers return for pollen, and we do this entire dance again.”

The hardship exemption’s “sincere paragraph” requirement has produced what Sorenson called “an accidental literary archive.” Applicants have submitted odes to autumn deadlines, one haiku (“forty lawns, six hours \/ the leaves keep falling, falling \/ please, I beg of you”), and a 900-word essay comparing the 10-to-4 window to “playing a piano with half the keys taped.” Bell’s application, Sorenson confirmed, “was sincere. You could feel the shoulders in it.” His exemption — two extra hours on weekdays — was granted 3–2.

The switch to rakes has had an unexpected upside: Bell’s crew reports that hand-raked lawns “look better, honestly,” and one crew member has become a local celebrity for his “rake technique videos,” which the task force shares approvingly. “We’re not monsters,” Sorenson said. “We want the leaves gone. We just want them gone at a volume where you can hear yourself think about how nice the leaves looked before they fell.”

Sorenson’s parting advice for residents: “If you must blow, blow kindly — and never before 10 a.m., because I will hear it, I will know, and I will bring the meter.”