Even when we thought things were not going to go anywhere, they do. AB 1346 (Berman) Air Pollution: small off road engines begins the phase out of small engines in this state. Now this should not come as a surprise to anyone that this is occurring, but we did not expect it to happen like this.

The author slid it through without much input from industry (well, any industry that uses small engines including landscapers). This resulted in a bill that is confusing and that may be unfeasible. However, it’s something that we may have to live with. The targets of this bill are small engines used for items like leaf blowers, lawn mowers, small engines used in our termite control rigs, and other pieces of application equipment that use gas powered engines (i.e. backpack mist blowers). The time frame for this bill is essentially to impact engines sold after 2024 so we have some time but that also means that we should begin to look at alternatives if you haven’t already. We will be talking a bit more about this in Palm Springs so feel free to attend the meeting to give your input and see how we can deal with this!

Darren Van Steenwyk, M.S., BCE
Director of Learning and Technical Services
Clark Pest Control
Office: (209) 368-7152 ext. 235
Mobile: (209) 224-4629
Fax: (209) 334-5040
darrenv@clarkpest.com