Hundreds swap their gas mowers for battery-powered ones (MD)

[jpak]

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-08-14/news/bs-md-lawnmower-trade-20100814_1_gas-mowers-new-mower-air-quality

Richard Morgan tried and failed to trade his 2000 Toyota in the federal government's "cash for clunkers" program, but on Saturday he got a deal from the state of Maryland that was almost as good.

He dumped his gas-hog Honda power mower and replaced it with a brand-new, deeply discounted, battery-powered rig.

"Mowing your lawn is like driving from here to Pittsburgh," said the 51-year-old Columbia resident, citing a comparison that underscores the environmental damage caused by small gasoline engines.

Morgan and hundreds of other eco-spirited, economy-minded Marylanders jumped at the chance to take part in the Great Maryland Lawn Mower Exchange of 2010. Staged in a parking lot between Baltimore's downtown sports stadiums, the event was designed to spread the word that gas mowers pollute and to provide an economical way for some to make the switch to battery power. The Maryland Department of the Environment co-sponsored the event with Clean Air Partners, a nonprofit coalition of area governments.

<more>

Mowers with gasoline engines are unusually dirty machines, spewing harmful compounds into the atmosphere at a prodigious rate.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, gas mowers produce 5 percent of all air pollution in the United States. Most grass-cutting takes place in the warmest months of the year, when air quality is often at its worst in places like the Mid-Atlantic region

[phantom power]

1. Phoenix has been running gas-for-electric mower swaps for a while now

For urban and suburban environments it's a good strategy. I don't miss shitting around with a gasoline engine to mow my lawn, either.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Considering that it's sitting in the middle of the desert, I've always wondered why...

Phoenix allows lawns at all.

(Isn't there a better use for all that irrigation water?)

[phantom power]

4. The local govts tend to encourage small lawns and/or xeriscaping

with the exception of some HOAs where they actually *require* home landscaping with 80% grass. (H20 FAIL) As with any resource, the best way to get more people to use less water would be to charge more for it. But I'm sure the GOP and club-for-growth peanut gallery would have a collective anneurism.

Most of our property is gravel. Which is common.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. When I was there many years ago, you could tell the natives from...

the transplants by the designs in the raked colored sand by their houses, with the occasional desert plant. I thought that worked-- attractive and went with the local environment.

(And, of course, the swamp coolers sitting on the roofs.)

[Ezlivin]

3. I wonder if these were available:

It's a Zero-turn radius electric mower (http://www.hustlerturf.com/products.html?sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=9&sobi2Id=19).

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. When we lived in MD I needed a lawn tractor to mow the yard

Never had one before, glad I don't need one now. That was on top of the regular lawn mower and the weed wacker. I had a small yard compared to friends who were mowing acres every weekend.