MONTCLAIR — One of the township’s longest-running debates seems to have been settled Tuesday night, when a majority of the council approved an all-out ban on gas-powered leaf blowers.

The issue dates back decades, with landscapers and residents waging a war of words in the opinion pages of local newspapers and the Township Council chamber. Yet the back-and-forth never changed: Landscapers decried inequity in the rules applied to the public, compared with township employees, and the impracticality of electric blowers in a community rich with canopies of deciduous shade trees arching over spacious properties, while residents complained of the environmental impact and noise pollution caused by the fuming, cacophonous machines.