To the editor: In a recent posting to the Lincoln Squirrel (“Leaf blower issue comes before voters again,” February 18), proponents of a Town Meeting proposal to limit the use of leaf blowers describe their proposal as noncontroversial. I disagree, and I strongly urge Lincoln residents to oppose it in its current form. The proposal…
leaf blowers*
Leaf blower issue comes before voters again
A group hoping to limit the use of gas-powered leaf-blowers in Lincoln will hold a public forum on Thursday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. in the Town Office Building to discuss regulations that will be voted on at the Annual Town Meeting in March. The Leaf Blower Study Group (now a subcommittee of the Conservation…
Letter to the editor: encourage less use of leaf blowers
(Editor’s note: Wilkerson is a member of the Lincoln Leaf Blower Study Committee, which has an official town web page and a Facebook page.) To the editor: Have you recently moved to Lincoln? Did peace and quiet figure prominently in your decision to live here? If so, I can imagine your surprise to find, at…
Letter to the editor: rebuttals on leaf blower issue
Editor’s note: this letter is in response to a letter published on January 12.
To the editor:
Michael Coppock’s questions and complaints about the Leaf Blower Study Group’s activities answer themselves, by and large. He notes the cost of the flyers mentioned in his letter (January 12, 2016) came from the Selectmen’s printing budget. Simply put, this expenditure, authorized by elected officials and/or persons appointed by them, reflected the interest of the town’s governing bodies in a subject that addresses both quality of life and health issues affecting Lincoln residents. The extent to which leaf-blower emissions and noise are seen as a public health problem is reflected by the existence of hundreds of local laws, ordinances and regulations regarding use of these machines in counties, cities, towns, and villages across the land and around the world. To be sure, these measures have proved difficult to enforce, for a number of reasons—but that does not diminish the public’s interest or the nature of the problem or the Board of Health’s responsibility to address it.
Letter to the editor: concerns over leaf blower group activities
To the editor:
Last fall, the Leaf Blower Study Committee spent $829.81 of the taxpayers’ money to mail a flyer to every postal patron in Lincoln, describing the alleged risks of leaf blowers. The flyer said nothing of the benefits of leaf blowers or costs of restricting their use. The money was taken from the Selectmen’s printing budget and categorized as “educational.” Town taxpayers also paid to obtain an Internet domain name for the Leaf Blower Study Committee.
Letter to the editor: pushback on leaf-blower letter
To the editor: Michael Coppock has recently written a letter to the editor (Lincoln Squirrel, Dec. 20, 2015) that ascribes rather dark intentions to the Lincoln Leaf Blower Committee. He says that it’s clear to him that this presages our introducing legislation at the next town meeting. In fact, the opposite is true—we decided last spring…
Letter to the editor: leaf blower mailing questioned
To the editor: The Lincoln Leaf Blower Study Group recently sent a brochure to everyone in town in which it quoted a March 2014 statement by the Board of Health saying, “Exposure to high-intensity, episodic or long-duration noise and air particulate and vapor dispersion from leaf blowers represents significant potential health hazards to our citizens.”…
Leaf blower regulations tabled at Town Meeting
After months of hearings and public debate about whether to restrict the use of leaf-blowers in Lincoln, a motion to approve new regulations was passed over at Town Meeting at the request of the Leaf Blower Study Committee, which decided in light of feedback that “this was not the time to propose regulations,” LBSC chair Jamie Banks told the audience.
Letter to the editor: agrees with earlier leaf-blower letter on “shared commons”
To the editor:
In a letter posted March 13, David O’Neil recognized the efforts of the Leaf Blower Study Committee to reverse our ever-heavier reliance upon leaf blowers in prettying our patches, public and private, big and little. O’Neil connected the unconstrained use of leaf blowers to the problem of “the commons” to which Garrett Hardin drew wide attention almost 50 years ago, in the springtime of the American environmental movement. O’Neil closed his letter by urging us all to acknowledge “that our shared commons are more valuable to our well-being, and to our survival, than anything that we may own as individuals.”
Letter to the editor: leaf blower controls aid “the commons”
To the editor:
The Leaf Blower Study Committee has worked hard to gain support for regulating the use of leaf blowers in Lincoln. They have earned limited support from the Board of Health for regulation in South Lincoln, but no support for town-wide regulations either from the Board of Health or the Conservation Commission.