Explaining the reasons for amending an existing noise bylaw during city council's monthly meeting last Monday evening, Councillor Patrick Martin said many residents have been complaining that leaf blowers are being used throughout the year, rather than just in the fall.

In the proposed new bylaw, noise readings taken from specific locations — such as the complainant's bedroom, balcony or back yard — would not be allowed to exceed permissible decibel levels set out for certain times of the day. The City is also insisting on the use of recent-model leaf blowers, first introduced in Europe and which are now much quieter.

"Even when they're in season, they're way too loud and some homeowners have gardeners who show up with two or three leafblowers at a time and make a heck of a racket," Martin said about the type of leaf blower now commonly in use.

"They use leaf blowers, in fact, just to sweep dust and create more dust, instead of blowing leaves around. So there's been some abuses there.

"Noise is indeed a form of pollution, and it is one of our important senses, and I'm personally very sensitive to it," he added. "And so this bylaw will be corrected to show that any leafblowers that will be used as of a certain date will have to meet a certain standard …We think that it is reasonable to demand that our citizens not be disturbed and that one resident not be able to disturb his neighbour by allowing this noise to go on."

According to Martin, Westmount's original noise bylaw, enacted in 1993, did not sufficiently take into account the location of sound and the location of those hearing it. "It was measured based on the sound at the property line," he said. "But if it's on a roof and you're down on the ground, do you go up there to measure it? Or is it down here, and then it goes right over your head?

"It goes into your window, but you're not supposed to measure it at the window. You're supposed to measure it at the property line. So this is being addressed in this bylaw to really reflect the nuisance factor of sound and of noise, that it is only a nuisance if it bothers somebody.

"If you happen to own 10 acres of land and you have your house in the middle, then you may not disturb anybody with your air conditioner, for example. But if you're on a slope and you're in the house below and you've got an air-con on your roof, and the next fellow has his bedroom there, you're likely to bother him.

"So that would be an unreasonable amount of noise in certain conditions, and it would be actually a health factor that must be addressed. It can cause a lot of tension and heart disease and all kinds of things. So we want to address this … I would be actually very interested to hear if people have comments on it before we pass it into law."