Blowing Leaves and Not Bagging Causes Problems with Tampa City Councilman Bill Carlson

February 28, 2023

74. Blowing Leaves and Not Bagging Causes Problems with Tampa City Councilman Bill Carlson

Grass clippings and yard waste blown into the street are causing damage to Tampa Bay, and it’s likely causing problems where you live. This episode of George Siegal's podcast features Tampa City Councilman Bill Carlson, and Chris Pratt, from the Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County, as they discuss illegal dumping, environmental protection, grass clippings on yards, fines for offenders, and more.

During their discussion, they provide insightful suggestions such as contacting the mayor's office for better code enforcement and neighborhood associations for newsletters that remind people of the fines involved. They also encourage residents to reach out to their neighbors, watch out for each other, and build a sense of community. Tune in now to learn more about why it is important to keep Tampa clean and safe! 

Topics Discussed: 

- Illegal Dumping 

- Environmental Protection Issues 

- Grass Clippings Left on Yards 

- Fines For Offenders 

- Suggestions For Residents to Keep Tampa Clean & Safe

Entities Mentioned: 

- Bill Carlson (Guest) 

- George Siegal (Host) 

- Chris Pratt (Guest) 

- Mayor's Office 

- Neighborhood Associations

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Transcript

George Siegal: 0:00

Thank you for joining me today on the Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. When you talk about making something better, it's a long road to accomplish anything. You have to rally people to your cause, get laws changed and wait for the results. But sometimes problems come along that are actually solvable. For example, where I live in Tampa, Florida, but it's also likely a problem where you live as well. You'll recognize the sound right away. Did you get it? You know what that sound is? It's those annoying blowers that gardeners and residents use to clean the leaves out of their yards. That sound makes the hair on my arms stand up, and it seems to happen most often either when we're out shooting a film outdoors, early in the morning when we're trying to sleep, or when I'm recording something in my office, happens all the time, the noise is bad enough. But what makes it even worse is the amount of people that then blow their leaves and grass clippings right into the street. You could drive around here almost any day and catch a bunch of people doing it. The problem here in Tampa is nobody cares to catch them. And making it even more frustrating is the fact there's already an ordinance on the books making it illegal to be doing this. You could stick a man or woman on a scooter, have them drive around and they could write dozens of tickets and voila, we have a problem we could actually make better quite easily. And if you aren't feeling the frustration like me, maybe this will get your attention. That yard waste that's getting blown into the street winds up costing the community millions of dollars. I'm George Siegal, and this is the Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. Every week we introduce you to people who are working on real world problems and providing actual solutions. Tell Us How to Make. It Better is partnering with The Readiness Lab, the home for podcasts, webinars and training in the field of emergency and disaster services. I have two guests joining me today to discuss this blower issue. Tampa City Councilman Bill Carlson. And from the Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County, Chris Pratt, the ordinance that is on the books has fines for residents ranging from $75 for first-time offenders to $450 for four-time offenders. If you're a professional landscape company, it's considered a Class four violation with a fine of$450 each time you're caught. Let's start off with Councilman Carlson. Councilman Carlson, thank you so much for joining me this morning.

Bill Carlson: 2:32

Thank you. Thanks for inviting me.

George Siegal: 2:34

Now, one of the most annoying things for me when I walk around this beautiful neighborhood I live in in South Tampa is those blowers that yard people use. And first, the noise is annoying as heck. And I always thought, gee, it'd be a great way if there was like a rule against this or some kind of law. And then I found out there was an ordinance against it and, uh, you were responsible, uh, for ma for making that happen. Tell me about this?

Bill Carlson: 2:56

Well, there's been an ordinance, there's a couple ordinances related to it that were in place for a while and we strengthened them about three years ago. Uh, one of them is about the hours of operation, and what we did is we, we narrowed the hours of operation. So you can't start as early on Sunday mornings. And, and forgive me, I won't remember exactly the time, probably, uh, 10 o'clock or something, but on weekdays it's a little bit earlier. And then the other one was to ban blowing leaves into the streets. Um, if, if you drive a car and you just washed it and you're driving down the road, you get hit by all the leaves and it makes your car dirty. But the real reason for that, for, uh, banning that is that, um, the leaves go into the drains. And a couple years ago, there was so much flooding in South Tampa they realized one of the clauses was, um, trash or leaf debris in the drainage system, and it cost a couple million dollars or more to clean those out. And so, uh, blowing leaves in the street really is a flooding problem, uh, which is of course one of the biggest problems in South Tampa.

George Siegal: 3:57

Now, I don't know if you ever saw the Seinfeld episode where Jerry rents a car and he goes to get the car and they don't have it, and he is talking about a reservation making one versus keeping one. So you have an ordinance but now enforcing the ordinance is, is seems like the most important part. And I called that office and they don't enforce it. They actually made it seem like it was my job to go around and find people for them to come out and write tickets for. So I don't know that much is getting done on, on actually enforcing it.

Bill Carlson: 4:26

Yeah. The other thing we did is we, we doubled the fines for it. Um, so there was an ordinance in place and we doubled the fines and made it more, um, strict about what you could do. But, um, yeah, it's up to code enforcement to do that. And, uh, unfortunately, city council does not have direct co authority over code enforcement. Um, in the beginning there was an educational program where the staff went out and educated people about it. Um, but since then, uh, I see people blowing things all over the place. By the way, the other piece of it that I tried to get through was to, um, ban gas powered leaf blowers. And the reason is that, uh, they cause more pollution than cars and they're louder. So the, um, the, the electric ones are much better. And I talked to people in the landscaping business and most of them are reasonable. Said, look, we'll put batteries on our, it's not a big deal. Uh, but there were quite a few people that pushed back against it. Of course, we would've phased it in over a couple years, but it would be much better for the environment and for our ears if we had electric only, that did not pass. I couldn't, I couldn't get four votes to pass that one, three years ago.

George Siegal: 5:29

Wow, that's surprising. I wonder what the people who voted against it were thinking that they didn't wanna burden these guys with expenses. But I was driving my son to school this morning and I saw four landscape crews blowing stuff right into the street. One of them was on Dale Mabry Highway, and it just makes me think that that would be an easy one to catch people with. But I don't know that the neighbors should have to start reporting on people. If I go up to some yard guy and say, you're not supposed to be doing this. I can just imagine what he's gonna tell me. So what are we supposed to do to, to actually have this enforced, cuz it seems important?

Bill Carlson: 6:02

Yeah, it sounds like the only thing we can do is call code enforcement. And I've, I've had to ask people not to do it also, I have gone up to landscapers and asked them, because if you're putting big amounts of debris in the street, it's gonna clog the drains. And then the next thing was, we're gonna get complaints about flooding. And, uh, it's not, it's not worth spending taxpayer dollars to clean out the drains because somebody doesn't want to bag the, the leaves.

George Siegal: 6:26

I've seen windy days where these guys are blowing it into the street. It's just gonna blow right back. So what can we do as citizens? I don't wanna become the neighborhood cop. I don't, uh, I think that's, I that would be a bad thing. So what should we do?

Bill Carlson: 6:39

Well, one thing you could do is, uh, folks could email or contact the mayor's office and ask for, um, the mayor's office to, to beef up, uh, code enforcement. We need more code enforcement in lots of ways. There are all kinds of problems throughout the city that code enforcement needs to take care of, um, including some in some parts of the city, illegal parking and, and buildings that are falling apart, people that have added parts of buildings that don't have permits. We need more code enforcement throughout the city.

George Siegal: 7:06

Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of the old time residents here talk about they don't like the way things are changing. They like the way it was, but be, it's not that way anymore. So we really have to do a better job. I mean, there's people that speed through neighborhoods. I think that's harder to catch, but the landscape guys are there for 20, 30 minutes. I mean, you could ride around in a day and probably write a hundred tickets if you wanted to and, and then I think it would stop.

Bill Carlson: 7:30

And, and it would, it could potentially be self-funding if the code enforcement people went through. And I proposed that quietly. There are a lot of issues with the city that need to be changed, and so the administration's been slowly working through them. Uh, but this is obviously one that, that needs to be looked at because it, it results in major problems like flooding.

George Siegal: 7:48

I would think that alone would be motivation for people, because we all know how South Tampa floods when you get an inch of rain that this seems like this one should be a no brainer.

Bill Carlson: 8:00

Most people probably are not even aware because the maintenance people come during the day and they're at work and they don't even know what their folks are doing. So one, the very first thing we should do is make sure that everyone asks their, uh, lawn maintenance people to, uh, to uh, rake them up. And, um, , put them in the back of the truck or whatever and, and haul them away. There are different things that they can do with them. Um, some of them recycle or compost them and some of them, uh, uh, take them to other places, but we need to find other solutions besides dumping it into the storm drains.

George Siegal: 8:31

And the one that's even more personal of that is when you see your neighbors doing it, that the neighbors, you don't really know that well, and they're just blowing their stuff out into the street. I mean, in that case, there's really not much you can do unless you go up and say something.

Bill Carlson: 8:43

Well, the other thing would be to contact the neighborhood associations. And the city did do this after we passed the ordinances, but it would be worth reminding them because every year there's new, um, neighborhood leaders. But if, uh, most of the neighborhood leaders, associations, especially in Tampa, in South Tampa, have newsletters and, um, for example, you could author an article to, to remind people of the fines and, and have people ask their landscaping folks to not do that anymore. And again, it's not just that we don't like having leaves on the street and we don't like having them blowing on our cars. Um, it costs the city millions of dollars to clean that rubbish out of the storm drains. Or the alternative is that we have greater flooding. We already have too much of that.

George Siegal: 9:22

Absolutely. Well, hopefully a lot of 'em will see this podcast and then it definitely will do that because it's something that, uh, that, that I think something needs to be done about. The next thing I'm gonna bug you about not. Will be people with dogs that are unruly and come running out and charge you when you're walking. But, uh, that's probably a whole other issue. I'm sure that's, uh, that would be a whole other adventure to get that one enforced.

Bill Carlson: 9:44

Yeah, I don't, that one I've not been involved in at all. So I'd have to do some research on that before, uh, before we talked about it. I saw on a next door somewhere the other day, people were complaining about, uh, folks putting, um, dog poo in there garbages.

George Siegal: 9:57

Sure.

Bill Carlson: 9:58

So, so you, your garbage is picked up by the garbage truck and then the lid is open all day, and then someone, uh, tosses one of those little bags in your garbage can and then it rains, and then suddenly it's full of, uh, poo soup. And so, um, folks ask people just to, just to put it in your own garbage instead of putting it somewhere else. It's a, it's a interesting dilemma. There was a big debate about it online.

George Siegal: 10:21

There's a lot of interesting ones that pop up on next door and you know, people get very sarcastic about it, but I think if everybody just minded their own, you know, minded their own business and did the right thing, it would make it better for everybody.

Bill Carlson: 10:34

Yeah. And the underlying issue that you kind of mentioned before is we all need to know our neighbors. We all need to reach out and talk to each other. Uh, we need to watch out, watch out for each other. Um, you know, if somebody's gone for the weekend and a package arrives, we need to trust each other enough to have them move the package to the back or somewhere where someone won't see it, um, uh, and, and just watch each other's houses and help each other out. Uh, that makes, uh, uh, Tampa a much better place and it takes it back to the way it used to be. The problem is that there's so many new people that we don't have the social capacity to reach out to all of them because there are fewer of us that grew up in the area, and we all need to find ways to get along and, and connect with each other.

George Siegal: 11:13

That's excellent advice. Thank you so much for your time and, uh, appreciate the work that you're doing.

Bill Carlson: 11:18

Thank you. Appreciate you reaching out.

George Siegal: 11:20

It's time for emergency preparedness to go mainstream, smart, innovative, practical solutions that match your needs. Instinct, ready, educates, prepares and equips the everyday person for disaster. With promo code, make it better you can access comprehensive preparedness courses and premium go bags. Visit instinct ready.com with promo code make it better today. Preparedness starts at home. The Environmental Protection Commission has to deal with all kinds of things being dumped into Tampa Bay. Yard waste causes a lot of problems when it ends up there. Chris, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.

Chris Pratt: 11:58

Great to be here, George. How you doing today?

George Siegal: 12:00

All this, these blowers drive me absolutely nuts. And the, the noise, the mess, when people are blowing their garbage into the street is, is very frustrating. But you come from it, come at it from a completely different perspective. From an environmental perspective, how bad is this when people blow their yard waste into the, into the street?

Chris Pratt: 12:20

Well, this, the concern with that is when things get blown into the street, of course when it rains, that stuff gets washed into the stormwater system. So you're talking about, uh, the grass clippings, the landscaping degrees, debris, stuff like that gets into the road. Also, any nutrients that are in there. So somebody has fertilized their, their lawns recently that st that material gets put into the street, gets into the storm water system, and it causes two problems. One, one of the main problems with the debris, that's not environmental, but it's just flooding in general. So the stuff gets into the storm water system, it'll clog up the pipes. Then you have, you know, you have flooding when it, when it rains heavily. What eventually happens though, is that material makes its way through the stormwater system and then whether that goes into, say, a retention pond in a neighborhood, it gets into the Hillsborough River or one of the other rivers in the county, eventually it'll make its way into Tampa Bay. And once that material gets into Tampa Bay, now you have, again, the, the, if there's any nutrients from fertilizer that are in there, those, those, cause you know, we have algae blooms and stuff that occur in the summer. Those are driven by nutrients. Also, the the debris itself, the grass clippings going into the pipe, getting into the bay, they'll start, they will start to de to deteriorate and they, as they break down, they release nutrients themselves. So the overall big picture is whether it's, it's the pond behind your house or in your neighborhood or into the bay. Once, once these nutrients get into the system, they start creating algae blooms. So as you have algae blooms, Now you, you can have fish, co fish die offs you, you know, it looks unsightly, it smells, uh, nutrient uh, pollution in the bay is a big deal because of the light attenuation. So as the more nutrients get in there, you have the chlorophyll A levels rise, and basically that it's, it clouds the water. So as the water gets more cloudy, now you have less light penetration to go through, and then there's certain habitats, no notably seagrasses, that what they need, they need light to survive. So the less light you have reaching to the seagrasses at the bottom, now you have seagrass die offs.

George Siegal: 14:48

So I would imagine, I would imagine one of the challenges of, of what you do is getting people to think beyond their yard. Because what you've just told us is like, yeah, I can blow the stuff outta the outta my yard. Now it's gone. It's not my problem., but it really then becomes everybody's problem.

Chris Pratt: 15:03

Absolutely. That's very true. If people, you know, a little, just a little bit that you do is, is, is you know what, what you're doing to your yourself, but if your neighbor's doing it and the guy down the street, you know, and ev, it all compounds to become a bigger problem. So it's changing the mindset of everybody. You know, if you, if you, you know, people see their neighbor blowing the debris into the street, and well, if they, you know, it's Ed, it's educating people to know that this is not the correct thing to do. So

George Siegal: 15:36

Yeah it, it seems like it's a solvable problem. It's so many problems that I hear about on a regular basis, especially doing this podcast, are ones that are long-term, wow, if we do this, if we do that, maybe we can accomplish this. This could be improved instantly if people just stopped doing it.

Chris Pratt: 15:52

Absolutely, and, and it's getting the message out there. So like you're this type of podcast and, and letting people know that this is an issue. A lot of people probably don't think about . Just mowing your grass. You know, if, when you, when you mow your grass, if you, if you turn your mower so you're blowing your grass clippings into your yard versus out into the street, you know, as you, as you go around along the edge there, that can help. It's just, it is getting that mindset and people, you know, people don't realize, you know, how much of a problem this potentially is with everybody, you know, they, they see the flooding when if, if you live in a neighborhood that's prone to flooding, and it's, you know, the pipes are getting backed up and stuff like that. They see that that's something that they, you know, they'll, they'll see the next time it rains and the streets are flooded, but they don't see the effects downstream in the bay. And with the long term overall effects.

George Siegal: 16:46

And that's what you guys have to worry about, it seems. I, I went one year when I first moved here to buy fertilizer for my palm trees, and they stopped selling it at a certain point in the year because they said, now it gets into the water and, and can cause a problem. I mean, one of the beau most beautiful things about living here is the Bay. People really need to be more conscious about protecting it.

Chris Pratt: 17:07

Absolutely. Yeah. And those, those fertilizer bands, those are, you know, bands on application and some areas actually bands on sales during the rainy season., uh, you, you, you, you, you're not allowed to put fertilizer because if you, if you fertilizer at that time, you have a heavier rain, well, guess what? It's not even getting absorbed into your, into your, your yard. It's going into the, into the stormwater system, and it's going right out to the bay and it's, it's, it's just fuel for, for the algae and the nutrients. Just like, it, just like fertilizers, you know, they fertilize your lawn, make your grass grow. Well grow the, the plants in the, in the, in the water. The, the algae are, are, um, plant-based, you know, so they pull the photosythesize, so that's fuel for them just to take off. And you gotta, you gotta think of the watershed, the size of the watershed of Tampa Bay. You've got, you've got all the creases and the rivers that flow through, but also just the storm water coming through all the different, there's just pipes that are coming through. This stuff is not treated, so when it rains, it's flushing directly out into the bay. So if you think of that, you know, the entire geographic area.,um, that everything going in at once, that's a lot of inputs and that cause potential problems.

George Siegal: 18:20

So what would your takeaway be for people that have those blowers and go out there, whether it's a company or a homeowner, what do they need to be thinking?

Chris Pratt: 18:31

They, they need to be collecting that material. Blow it back into your yard. Because that's one of the things is if you blow those gold, if you keep those grass clippings on your, on your property they'll release our nutrients into your yard at that point. So, you know, like a good mulching lawnmower or something like that. Um, blowing them into the streets is not the answer. If you, if, if, if you don't like the grass clippings on your yard, then a way to like a, somehow to bag 'em up and dispose 'em that way with the solid waste collection, that's your best.

George Siegal: 19:08

All right, last question cuz I can't be talking to a guy named Chris Pratt without asking him about the name and, and what that's like going around with that because we did talk about it when I first contacted you. So what's it like having the name of a guy that's now blowing up is really famous?

Chris Pratt: 19:23

Well, it's funny because, because, uh, I'm older than he is, so, you know, I went through a lot of my life without anybody commenting on it and when, uh, When I, when I first, you know, with the first, um, guardians of the Galaxy movie, I took my kids to it. They were kind of young, and I, and the name popped up on the screen and I said, there's my name right there, you know, and they weren't impressed and I still can't get them to call me Star Lord. So, um, that's, that's how it goes. But yeah, I, I, I get it a lot more as, as he, as he becomes more popular, a lot of people you know, they, I, I, I'll sometimes when I show up for an interview or to give a speech someplace, um, I, you know, I start off by saying I'm an, I know you're expecting somebody else that's, you know, a lot better looking to me and a lot taller, but unfortunately you're stuck with me. So,, George Siegal: Yeah, I got that growing was already, uh, somebody famous before I existed. I mean, he was already a, a famous working actor, so I was kind of coming in behind that. You had your name first. Maybe Chris has to change his. That's what I'm saying. Maybe I, maybe I should be able to get some sort of, uh, I need to be able to get some sort of, uh, compensation out of that from him at some point.

George Siegal: 20:41

All right. Chris, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Chris Pratt: 20:44

All right. Not a problem, George. Great to meet you. Take care.

George Siegal: 20:47

Thank you for listening to the Tell, Us How to Make It Better podcast. And thanks to Councilman Carlson. And Chris Pratt for joining me today, boo to the folks in the Tampa PD who are supposed to enforce the ordinance and write the tickets, they actually told me I needed to run around reporting people if I wanted to do something about this. So I guess I've been deputized. That is clearly no way to solve a problem, so without their help doing something about it, residents, we need to bag our yard waste and tell your gardeners to do the same thing. Mine already does. Let's all take individual responsibility and make this better. See you next time.