Colorado’s air quality regulator is considering a new rule that seeks to curb emissions from gas-powered lawn and garden equipment and prohibit their use by government entities — or their contractors — for three months of the year.

The prohibition’s timing is meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during the ozone season in the Denver Metro and Northern Front Range “nonattainment” region. Nonattainment means the region is failing to meet federal air quality standards.

A landscaping business owner said such a rule would significantly increase costs, which will be passed on to customers, or potentially run his company into the ground.

Proponents said it’s necessary to bring ozone levels in metro Denver to manageable levels, part of a comprehensive approach by the state to transition away from fossil-based energy.

Bryan Meinert, president of JRM Landscape and Design, a family-owned business started in 1983 by his father, said the prohibition on using gas-powered equipment for three months of the year could ruin his company.

“It would be a huge hit. That’s most of our season. The season out here in Colorado is pretty short. It’s basically April through October, as far as our growing season and landscape season,” Minert told The Denver Gazette. “It’s one of (the state’s) busiest times for tourism down here in the metro area. So, we try to have all of our properties looking as beautiful as possible and not being able to service them during that time is definitely going to put an eyesore on the communities.”

The rule proposed by the Air Pollution Control Division would prohibit government use of gas-powered equipment from June 1 to August 31 each year. In practice, this means state agencies must either buy new electric equipment or contract out landscaping work with businesses that deploy electric-powered equipment — or not maintain the landscaping for three months.

This comports with Gov. Jared Polis’ Sept. 13 executive order to phase out the use of gas-powered lawn and garden equipment, replacing them with electric equipment by June 2025. This includes anything from push lawn mowers to leaf blowers to weed whackers.

In the order, Polis said that, in particular, gasoline-powered lawn and garden equipment “create high levels of localized emissions that include hazardous air pollutants, criteria pollutants, and carbon dioxide emissions” and that these “non-road” emissions “significantly contribute to air pollution, raising concerns about the impacts on public health.”

The air pollution control division proposed rule suggests people could “defer lawn and garden activities to periods outside of the June through August timeframe, alleviating the need to acquire or use alternative equipment.”

An alternative proposed rule, submitted by the Regional Air Quality Council, prohibits the sale of gas-powered equipment in the ozone nonattainment area beginning January 1, 2025. It prohibits all public entities, including private contractors who work for public entities, from using gas powered equipment smaller than 10 horsepower or 200 cc’s during the nonattainment area’s ozone season.

And, starting on June 1, 2026, all commercial entities, no matter who they work for, would be prohibited from using such equipment during the ozone season in the nonattainment area.

“It would almost put us out of business,” Minert said. “We can’t afford to completely overhaul our small equipment fleet right now, and if we did, our prices would go up four or 500%, which then passes the buck on to our customers and to their customers and makes cost of living in Colorado skyrocket.”

Minert said he would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to switch over to battery operated equipment in such a short timeframe.

“Now, the electric stuff is double, if not triple the price of a gas powered unit. Plus, we need to carry around charging stations generators to charge them in our trailers,” Minert said. “When you have a person using a piece of equipment for 10 hours a day, the amount of batteries that they have to go through, it’s just crazy without charging throughout the day.”

Making things worse is the fact that gas generators used to charge batteries are included in the list of prohibited equipment, meaning Minert would have to find another way to recharge batteries.

Minert said his company already has to buy thousands of dollars of new batteries for his construction division’s power tools, in part because of how cold temperatures affect them.

“We use a lot of battery powered hand tools in our construction division, and every year we have to buy countless batteries for our hand tools,” Minert said. “They don’t survive the wintertime. We store them to manufacturer specs, but they still just stop holding a charge after the wintertime, so we have to throw them away and buy new ones.”

The rule suggested that three years is sufficient time for commercial operators to convert to all-electric equipment.

“The prohibition for government entities begins June 1, 2025, and the prohibition for commercial entities begins June 1, 2026, so as to allow sufficient time to schedule the use of allowed equipment and/or obtain alternative equipment, as necessary,” the proposed rule said. “Alternative equipment may include electric and manually operated lawn and garden equipment, which is already readily available.”

The eight-county region — Jefferson, Boulder, Larimer, Denver, Jefferson, Douglas, Arapahoe, Adams and Weld — has had seasonal problems with ozone levels for decades. In 2020, EPA reclassified the region as “moderate nonattainment” and downgraded the area’s rating from serious to severe on September 15, 2022.

The Regional Air Quality Council Electrify Lawn and Garden working committee estimated cutting emissions up to approximately 18 tons of volatile organic compounds ( VOCs) and 4 tons of nitrous oxides (NOx) per day, assuming that all commercial small lawn and garden equipment was not used from June through August.

High temperatures, intense sunlight and persistent high-pressure systems that keep winds down in summer cause precursors — VOCs like methane and industrial solvents, and NOx produced by motor vehicles and other combustion sources, including power plants — to linger in the region and be turned to ozone.

The division “believes there could be economic impacts related to the proposed Regulation Number 29 for lawn and garden equipment operators should equipment upgrades, or replacement be necessary.” The body provided no numbers estimating the cost to companies that would have to replace their equipment.

Instead, the division asked for more information from industry and other stakeholders concerning the potential economic effects and benefits of the proposed rules.

The air quality commission can adopt either version or create its own.