Blowers and mowers? What? I can't hear you!

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

WHAT'S NEXT Eugene City Council discusses whether leaf and bark blowers should be regulated in the city's noise ordinance:

When, where: Noon on Aug. 16 at City Hall, 777 Pearl St.

CLAIM TO FAME Eugene is dominant globally in the blower-truck industry: Eugene-based Rexius Forest By-Products: Invented the technology, created Express Blower Inc. and manufactured and sold blowers worldwide; sold a majority share of its Express Blowers to DHG of New York in 2002. Express Blower manufacturing arm moved to Ohio in January 2006. Sales and service functions remain in Eugene.

Eugene-based Lane Forest Products: Launched its own line of blower trucks called Blo-Tech Systems. Sold Blo-Tech in 2001 to Eugene-based Peterson Pacific Corp., which now makes the blower trucks at its plant near the Eugene Airport.

The sound of summer is no longer a lazy lawn mower droning in the distance.

Today, it's a gas-powered wall of racket as neighbors and landscapers crank up leaf blowers, hedge trimmers, weed whackers, pressure washers, wood chippers and so on to the furthest limits of the yard-care industry's imagination.

The local hills also thrum with locally manufactured bark-blowing trucks that deliver mountains of mulch and soil to the ritzier neighborhoods of town.

That noise is driving south hills resident Jerry Oltion mad. Each year, the din intensifies, he said. This year, he says he dreaded the arrival of spring.

"I don't want to go through another year of this," he said. "These people don't understand the price they're demanding of their neighbors."

Oltion has found four highly placed sympathizers: City Councilors Betty Taylor, David Kelly, Bonny Bettman and Andrea Ortiz.

The quartet set a work session for Aug. 16 to discuss the racket in Eugene and whether the city's noise ordinance should address bark-blowing trucks, hand-held leaf blowers and other noisemakers.

Bark-blower central

Lane County is home to the highest number of bark-blowing trucks per capita in the world.

The giant, rumbling trucks carry 40 or more cubic yards of bark, compost or soil, which they deliver by pneumatic conveyance through hoses to gardens hundreds of feet from the truck.

The average U.S. metropolitan area has one blower per 50,000 residents. Lane County has one blower per 20,000, according to Arlen Rexius, who's involved in blower-truck manufacturing and privy to worldwide sales figures.

That's a dozen mulch trucks plying Eugene-Springfield neighborhoods daily.

"You're in the town of mulch truck blowers," said Sharon Posner, an owner of Lane Forest Products and a one-time blower-truck manufacturer.

The bark blowers make a din. The undertone noise comes from the idling 275-horsepower truck engine that powers the blower. The blower itself emits a higher-pitched upper layer of noise. And the racket can last for hours, depending on the size of the delivery job.

The mulch and dirt could be unloaded by hand and deposited via wheelbarrow, although that would take much longer and cost more if hired labor were used.

Oltion, a science fiction writer, says at least a half-dozen of his neighbors along or near Brookside Drive off Brae Burn Drive in south Eugene received deliveries this July.

Oltion - author of 13 novels, including a Nebula Award winner - works at home, but whenever the trucks come, his work day is shortened. "They're buying their convenience at the expense of my peace and quiet," he said, "and I haven't consented to that."

Blown bark is the dominant aesthetic in Oltion's neighborhood. The yards are steep and the neighbors can afford the service. It's a neighborhood of movers and shakers in academia and government.

`It's the more influential areas (that order bark). The hilly areas, but also the Coburg Road area,' said Arlen Rexius, senior vice president of mulch producer and deliverer Rexius Forest By-Products in Eugene.

"You're not talking about the poorest house on the street," said Oren Posner, vice president of rival Lane Forest Products.

On Brookside Drive, most yards sport some bark, and some yards are covered in it. On one, the bark sits a foot thick at the curb.

"Twice a year, bark, bark, bark. I don't know why the house isn't buried already," Oltion said.

And why not bark, neighbor Richard Walker countered.

The bark adds nutrition and color, sets off the lawn, enhances the flower beds, and is a natural covering for the wooded hillsides where grass can't grow, Walker said.

If homeowners had to haul the bark uphill by hand, it would be "cruel and unusual," he said.

To Debra Healey on nearby Pine View Court, the noise of the blower trucks is the sound of efficiency.

One man running a bark blower can do in an hour what it takes a crew of men a day or two to do, according to the blower-truck manufacturers.

Healey owns a 1-acre lot. She said she'd have to pay her landscaper for a week of labor to spread bark around her place by hand. "You'd be asking homeowners to pay three times the cost, and a lot of back labor for our landscapers," she said.

Bark blowing is an enormously popular service, the retailers say.

Lane Forest Products' six trucks blow three or four yards a day, and the waiting list is a month long. People would not tolerate a ban, Oren Posner said.

Urban din

Noise pollution becomes an issue for cities as they grow, said Keli Osborn, a Eugene permit review manager who is writing a noise report for the City Council.

In California, 20 cities have adopted full or partial bans on high-pitched, two-stroke leaf blowers. Eighty others chose to limit hours of use for leaf-blowers or the decibel level they can produce.

As for mulch trucks, both Lane Forest Products and Rexius say they've made improvements and that it's the other guy who has the noisier trucks.

Oren Posner said that on Rexius trucks, the blower is mounted outside the mulch bin and that's noisier. But Arlen Rexius says his trucks are quieter because the company sells them in European cities with strict noise standards.

"This will all prove out in the end when someone starts checking decibels to find out who's really getting complaints," he said.

Both say they try to be sensitive to neighbors. Neither delivers on Sundays, although they'd have plenty of orders if they did.

Oren confides that he wishes landscaping contractors wouldn't order mulch for his neighbors when he's home on Saturdays.

"It's loud. It's really loud," Sharon Posner added.

When the Eugene City Council takes up the issue of blower noise this month, it will be about a decade from the first time they picked up the touchy subject.

In the September 1996, the council broached a ban on leaf blowers, but the issue died for lack of support. This time, four of the eight councilors have agreed at least to review the noise ordinance.

The Eugene Police Department is in charge of enforcing city noise ordinances. Mostly, it handles complaints about barking dogs or loud parties.

The ordinance prohibits noise loud enough to annoy "a reasonable person of normal sensitivities." It's not clear whether Eugene police have ever written a citation involving a leaf or bark blower.

After the work session, the City Council could change the ordinance to list and restrict certain lawn care appliances, make hour and day rules for noisemaking, specify decibel limits or allow only the quietest available technology to operate in the city.

Oltion said he isn't expecting big changes.

"I'll endure like everybody else does," he said. "The world has bigger problems than mulch-blowing trucks."

CORRECTION (ran 8/8/2006): Susan Posner is an owner of Lane Forest Products. She was misidentified in an article on Page C1 on Sunday.