Melville Chamber of Commerce

Huntington Would Trade Its Gas Leaf Blower Ban for Two Cleanup Seasons

Local Law 25-2026 would drop Huntington's unenforced gas blower ban for spring and fall cleanup windows, and move commercial crews to weekdays.

By Melville Chamber of Commerce ·

A worker with a backpack leaf blower clears fallen autumn leaves from a tree-lined paved path

The Huntington Town Board holds a public hearing at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, September 15, at Town Hall on Main Street on Local Law Introductory No. 25-2026. It rewrites the part of the town noise code that governs gas-powered leaf blowers, and it does two things at once. It deletes the outright ban on gas blowers that the code says began on January 1, 2026, and it puts a calendar in its place.

For a landscaping company, a property manager, or any business that pays a crew to keep its lot clean, the calendar is the part that matters. It decides when the equipment already on the trucks can legally run, and it changes who can work on weekends.

A ban on the books that nobody is enforcing

Section 141-4(N) of the Huntington code currently ends with a single line: subject to its exceptions, operating a gas-powered leaf blower is prohibited from January 1, 2026. The section was last amended by Local Law No. 48-2024, which the board adopted in November 2024 under Resolution 2024-616.

That law is not being enforced. The board stayed enforcement in February 2025 under Resolution 2025-104, and this February it extended the stay by one more year, to February 11, 2027, under Resolution 2026-77. The February resolution set out the board's reasoning. Requiring a switch from gas to battery blowers would put immediate and substantial costs on homeowners. Charging batteries would lean on fuel-burning generators with their own noise and emissions. Residents had raised concerns about battery storage safety. And the board wanted more time with community leaders, residents and commercial landscapers before anything took effect.

So the code says gas blowers are banned, and the town has said it will not act on that until next February. Tuesday's law settles the contradiction by removing the ban.

What replaces it

The text the board scheduled for hearing on June 9, under Resolution 2026-358, defines when running a gas blower counts as a noise disturbance.

It would be a violation at any hour from the Friday of Memorial Day weekend through October 15, and again from December 24 through February 28. Outside those two blackout periods, it would be a violation on weekdays before 8 a.m. or after 6 p.m., on Saturdays before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m., and at any time on a Sunday or a holiday.

The law also names the open windows outright. Spring cleanup runs from March 1 through the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. Fall cleanup runs from October 15 through December 23.

Two smaller changes ride along. The existing limit of two hours of gas blower use per property on weekdays, and one hour on weekends, is deleted. And the weekday evening cutoff moves from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.

The commercial exception moves to weekdays

Today's text carves out cemeteries, golf courses, school-owned properties, and commercial landscapers performing commercial work in commercial and industrial zones. Those users may run gas blowers on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

The amendment keeps the same list of users and rewrites their window to Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., holidays excluded, notwithstanding the rest of the section. On a plain reading, a crew servicing an office park or a shopping center in a commercial zone could run gas equipment on weekdays all year, including through the summer blackout. What that crew loses is the weekend. Outside the two cleanup seasons, weekend gas blower work on commercial property no longer fits inside any exception, and Sundays are out everywhere.

The director of public safety keeps the power to suspend the restrictions in an emergency. If the board adopts the law, it takes effect as soon as it is filed with the New York Secretary of State.

What it means for members

If you run a landscaping company working in Huntington, build your fall schedule around October 15. If the law passes, gas equipment is legal on residential accounts from that date through December 23, on weekdays until 6 p.m. and on Saturdays from 9 to 5, never on Sundays. If it fails, February 11, 2027 is the date to watch, because that is when the stay on the existing ban runs out.

If you manage commercial property or buy landscaping for it, pull your service contract and look for weekend work. Office parks and shopping centers often schedule blowers for Saturday or Sunday when the lots are empty. Under the new text, that crew belongs on a weekday for most of the year, and the price and the route may change with it.

And if you have been holding off on replacing gas equipment with battery units because of the 2026 ban, that deadline is exactly what is on the table Tuesday. The hearing is public. When the board delayed enforcement it said it wanted to hear from commercial landscapers, and an operator who can put a number on what the calendar does to a season is the testimony that request was written for.

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