Isn’t it a bit foolish to make citizens spend precious hours of their personal time raking piles of leaves just to stuff them into tens of bags that they have to buy and then place them in the alley where city employees spend more costly man hours and fuels and equipment to collect them and then disposing of who-knows-how and at what cost? Why can’t we just burn ‘em in the gutter like we did in the old days? They’re completely organic and produce no toxic fumes (as far as I know). The residue becomes a fraction of the capacity of the whole product and gets flushed into the sewer system. They’re still allowed to do this in some suburbs so I don’t think there is any state or federal law against it. Am I way off base here? Why?
If I correctly recall from when this ruling first passed, it was indeed an air quality issue. But I completely agree with your analysis: it seems counterproductive in the long run.
But relax. It’s still legal to burn an American flag if you really have to burn something.
Though pollution is a factor, fire safety has become the primary reason. The leaf fires can spread to buildings, etc.
Town already burned down once, so a little extra caution is probably understandable.