Denver Councilmember Sarah Parady requested a second delay on voting for a trio of contracts worth $25.5 million that would pay for upgrades and replacements to Denver Parks and Recreation landscaping, gardening and golf course maintenance equipment.

The first-term councilmember previously called the three contracts out last week asking the council to consider alternatives to gas powered landscaping tools. She repeated this request Monday and shared information about how gas powered equipment impacts health and air quality more so than something like a car.

Denver, and indeed the metro area as a whole, have experienced many days of air quality alerts. Though driven primarily by fires burning in California, Oregon and locally, Denver regularly sees “ozone action days,” and air quality alerts due to high concentrations of ground level ozone. On Memorial Day Weekend, The Denver Gazette’s media partner 9News reported Denver had the 6th worst air quality nationwide.

Parady, an at-large councilmember, wants to see Denver move towards healthier and less polluting equipment, especially as the city fails to meet federal standards.

“Given our climate goals, I’ve been in conversation with departments about our ability to move towards electric alternatives for some of this equipment,” she said. “I’ve spoken with the Regional Air Quality Control Council, which is a state body charged with advising the state air quality regulator, and they can explain why I think we need to take more time to consider these contracts.”

Members of the Regional Air Quality Council, the lead planning agency for air quality on the Front Range, were present led by David Sabados, the communications, programs and government affairs director.

The issue with small, gas powered equipment, like leaf blowers and lawn mowers, is their emissions aren’t regulated as tightly as a motor vehicle, he said.

Where a car may have a catalytic converter to filter and convert harmful chemicals into harmless substances like steam, lawnmowers and leaf blowers do not. Because of this lack of filtration and conversion, gas powered lawn care equipment contributes greatly to “ozone precursors,” Sabados said.

“These are the pollutants that combine to create ground level ozone, which is the issue that we are out of attainment for according to the Environmental Protection Agency and federal standards,” he said. “There are some light federal standards, but generally speaking, this is a mostly unregulated area and one that is very highly polluting.”

Pollution caused by lawn care and landscaping equipment is also causing ozone precursors from those emissions to grow, the only case where that is happening, according to Sabados. Voluntary measures locally have reduced some emissions that impact overall air quality, but do little to address the equipment the city may purchase, Sabados said.

There’s also the issue of potential future regulation from the state. Already, there is an adopted air quality regulation that will take effect June 1, 2025 banning the use of gas powered devices by local governments with an engine smaller than 10 horsepower during summer months.

There is a growing effort to look at expanding that law to include larger engines, Sabados said.

“The current regulation is a ban on the use by local governments of small equipment regardless of what is already owned,” he said. “If a similar regulation is pushed for larger equipment, the city could be left owning millions of dollars worth of equipment it cannot use.”

The contracts in question are for master purchase orders totaling $25.5 million. In city documents detailing the purchase order, the city does include some hybrid electric equipment. By and large however, the equipment is diesel or gasoline powered. In one of the purchase orders, only two mowers are listed as hybrid electric or fully electric. One light utility vehicle is fully electric and the other is a biodiesel hybrid.

Costs for the equipment are broadly similar, with some gasoline powered mowers costing the same as their electric counterparts. Diesel equipment seems to be an outlier, as mowers using diesel are typically more expensive.

No such regulation is on the books as of August 6, however, but it may soon be a consideration.

A regulation banning small gas powered equipment was adopted in February and became effective in April, giving operators of the banned equipment more than a year to begin converting their stockpiles to non-gas powered devices.

If new regulations are passed, it is unlikely the changes mandated would need to be implemented overnight.

The council ultimately agreed to postpone the vote by two weeks in order to consider non-gas powered alternatives to the equipment Denver Parks and Recreation sought to purchase.