City Parks & Rec to Demo Battery Tools

This Friday, April 21, 2023, the day before Earth Day, Santa Cruz’s Parks & Recreation Department’s maintenance crew will be on site at City Hall to demonstrate the use of battery-powered landscape tools for the public and landscaping businesses.

Our city parks are where children, families, and the public at large go to exercise, recreate, and relax, so C.H.A.S.E. is happy to see the City replacing outdated gas-powered leaf blowers and other gas tools, which spew inordinate amounts of toxins and carcinogens into the air we all breathe, with cleaner, quieter battery tools.

The City’s Health in All Policies objectives (2019) call for the city to incorporate equity, public health, and sustainability in all its actions, and retiring the dirtiest tools in their fleets is low-hanging fruit and aligns with all three of those priorities. We encourage the City to replace their remaining gas-powered landscape tools as soon as possible, as so many other cities have done.

So come and see how our Parks Department is incorporating battery tools into their operations, and try them out yourself and see how far the technology has come:

Friday, April 21, 12:00-2:00pm
Santa Cruz City Hall

And as a reminder, the state of California has offered nearly $30 millon to help small landscape businesses replace their gas tools with battery powered versions, and there’s still $14 million left in the fund. If you’d like the landscapers in your neighborhood to use cleaner, quieter tools where your family lives and breathes, print out this flyer (English and Spanish) and hand it to them or leave it on their windshield so they can take advantage of the huge discounts before they run out.