Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission is preparing to consider an expansion of Regulation 29 that would restrict how much gas-powered lawn equipment commercial landscapers can use during the summer ozone season in the Denver Metro and North Front Range area. The proposal is scheduled for a Nov. 18–20 hearing. It is not yet a final ban, despite the headline doing a little extra cardio.
According to the Denver Gazette, the proposed limits would apply to certain commercial equipment with engines of 10 horsepower or less, including trimmers, blowers, edgers, pruners and walk-behind mowers. The allowable share of gas-powered equipment use would begin at 90 percent in 2027 and decline to 10 percent by 2032. Commercial operators would also inherit new recordkeeping and annual reporting duties, because apparently the lawn is not truly mowed until somebody files a form about it.
The Bullet Point Brief
- The AQCC will consider the Regulation 29 expansion at its Nov. 18–20 hearing. This is still a proposal, not a completed regulatory ambush. There is still time for the people who actually use this equipment to explain reality to the people regulating it.
- The rule would phase in summer limits on certain gas-powered tools used by commercial landscapers in the ozone nonattainment area. The caps would start at 90 percent in 2027 and sink to 10 percent by 2032. Nothing says “gradual” like slowly tightening the vise.
- Covered equipment includes string trimmers, hedge trimmers, leaf blowers, edgers, pruners and push or walk-behind mowers under the specified horsepower limit. In other words, the basic tools used by crews expected to keep properties maintained on schedule.
- Regulators say the proposal targets ozone-forming emissions from small engines. That is the clean-air argument, and it deserves a hearing. So does the practical question of whether replacement equipment, charging capacity, battery life and job schedules work the same way in a conference-room presentation as they do on a ninety-degree workday.
- Landscapers would face reporting and recordkeeping requirements on top of equipment changes. The commission is asking businesses expecting compliance costs to submit that information for its economic analysis. A remarkably bureaucratic way of saying, “Please calculate how expensive our idea may be for you.”
My Bottom Line
Clean air matters. So do working businesses. Colorado’s regulators should be capable of holding both thoughts at once without pulling a mental hamstring.
The people considering this proposal are not the ones loading trailers before sunrise, keeping crews moving, meeting customer schedules or making payroll when equipment goes down. Yet they may soon dictate what tools those businesses can practically use during their busiest season. That is the modern Colorado regulatory model: the professional class announces progress, and the working class gets the invoice.
The central question is the one the rulemaking language politely tiptoes around. Who absorbs the cost when the state regulates a work tool out of practical use? It will not be the agency issuing the mandate. It will be the landscaper replacing equipment, changing operations and losing flexibility. Then it will be the customer paying the higher bill. Government remains undefeated at spending other people’s money while calling it innovation.
The AQCC should demand real-world answers before advancing Regulation 29. Not slogans. Not sales percentages. Not assurances from people whose mower experience ends at watching someone else push one. Colorado does not need another Front Range policy experiment delivered from above to the people expected to mow through it.
Source: Denver Gazette
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