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Missing the Stars above Jefferson County

The Twirling Botanist

Some Things Considered

by David Lillard

Hiking along the Appalachian Trail in the dark of night, one foot in Jefferson County’s eastern edge and the other in Virginia, it’s impossible not to notice the glow. The sky glow from greater Charles Town puts out enough lumens to cast shadows through the trees high up on the Blue Ridge. On some nights there is enough light from the sky glow to make shadow-bunny puppets on the rocks.

The skies over Jefferson County are so bright that even on moonless nights it’s hard to see the stars. From the ridge you wonder why Jefferson businesses and residents spend their money on electricity that shines a reading lamp on the clouds above the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley instead of their properties. Bright lights have emerged as the natural state of night in the county, in and around its towns and the parking areas of businesses and commercial buildings. Where once Jefferson County was the go-to place for amateur astronomers, it’s losing its stature.

The absence of darkness amounts to more than an annoyance for astronomers. Floodlights from residences and businesses alike are seen as a nuisance to people who feel they have lost the right to enjoy their own property at night. Glaring outdoor lighting has also become a public safety issue on roadways. And increasingly, police departments in many parts of the country are battling bad lighting because they say it contributes to crime.

“A lot of what we think we know about outdoor lighting is based on myths,” says Shepherdstown resident Mark Wirt, a member of the International Dark-Sky Association, or IDA, a research and education organization.

The Arizona-based group was formed by astronomers who were concerned that the tens of millions of dollars invested in Southwest observatories and federal research centers were being flushed down the drain, rendered useless by ambient light. Today, from a mountain prospect above many Southwest cities—cities with more than 10 times the population of Jefferson County—the sky above is dark enough to see constellations. From an airplane, flying over counties of sizable populations, you can see that the ground is lighted and parking lots appear as pools of light on the ground. The sky above the lamps, however, is dark. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. IDA has since crafted model lighting ordinances and helped spur a market for fixtures that light what they are supposed to light. But more than anything, they’ve busted myths.

Unraveling Myths

Any motorist who has driven across the Potomac River on the new Rumsey Bridge into Shepherdstown can testify against the myth that horizontally projected bright light helps you see in the dark. The exact opposite is true. If there is any moisture in the air at all, the glare is so great it becomes nearly impossible to see the care-free college students crossing Route 34 in front of you, even when you are traveling below the posted speed. That’s because the light from the lampposts is shining directly into the motorist’s eyes rather than down on the sidewalk. As one Shepherdstown resident puts it: “The air above the bridge is so well lit, it would be perfect if I were flying a hover craft and wearing welder’s glasses.”

Indeed, the Rumsey Bridge is a textbook case of what IDA would term bad and dangerous glare: it creates a hazard with no discernable benefit. Motorists have headlights, so they don’t need the air before them to be lit up. Pedestrians don’t get usable light either, due to the glare from the lights in front of them. And the charm that might be created by these traditional-styled fixtures is destroyed by the glare they emit.

“If you see the light source instead of the light it produces, the light is going in your eyes instead of where it’s supposed to go,” said Wirt. “If it’s going into your eyes, it’s reducing safety.”
The simple solution would have been to install full cutoff fixtures that focus light into pools on the sidewalk, where it is most useful to pedestrians. For the lights on the Rumsey Bridge and most other fixtures, that means the lights have a back to them so the light projects in a specific direction. The existing lighting fixtures can probably be modified to make them full cutoff. “The expense to retrofit the fixtures will easily pay for itself in the reduced wattage to operate them,” said one lighting dealer who specializes in full cutoff fixtures.

So, myth busted. Bright lights don’t help visibility; they reduce visibility. Traffic fatalities involving pedestrians actually rise with the intensity of omni-directional lighting.
One thing that does increase is the amount of glare in the windows of people who live near the bridge. Guests at the Bavarian Inn might be thankful that they can read in bed without turning on the lights.

Perhaps the biggest myth about outdoor lighting is that it deters crime because criminals will avoid bright light. An increasing body of evidence, some of it from the U.S. Department of Justice, suggests otherwise. In the largest study in terms of security lighting, DOJ found no statistical correlation between street lighting and crime.

Law enforcement officials in San Antonio have found that darkening the area around public schools had the direct effect of lowering the vandalism rate. Since they started darkening schools—that is, providing a lower level of lighting—the annual cost of repairs due to vandalism went down from $160,000 to $41,000.

IDA cites several reasons for the discordance between conventional wisdom and reality. Without getting too technical, it boils down to two factors. First, the human eye can discern only so much contrast between darkness and bright light because different regions of the eye are involved in low-level night vision and daytime vision. If you’ve heard the expression about rock concerts being so loud a person can’t hear the music, you get the idea. When light is too bright, as it often is in shopping centers, car dealerships, and other commercial areas at night, the eye is literally blinded by the light. And because a brightly lighted parking area usually lies between the “protected” stores and the police cruiser on rounds out on the road, it can be impossible for police to see criminals standing right in front of a shop.

The type of light used matters to the eyes, too. The most popular parking-lot lights are the high-pressure mercury lights (those harsh, blue-tinted ones). They are a little cheaper to buy but much more expensive to operate than low-sodium lamps, the ones giving the soft yellow glow. So when overnight light is necessary, there is a choice that actually improves visibility and is cheaper to operate.

Another myth busted: Brighter light is not safer than dimmer. Choosing the right light for each setting is far more important. The same is true for residences, according to information published in IDA’s extensive list of fact sheets. Experts say it’s safe to assume that some night lighting can dissuade prowlers, but that does not mean that more light is better. Instead of all-night flood lights shining brightly toward woods and fields, motion activated lights focused on key locations are more effective.

Perhaps the biggest irony is that for most uses, it costs no more to buy full cutoff lighting fixtures than the ones we have come to live by. All told, full cutoff lighting costs about the same to purchase, costs less to operate, provides better visibility, and enhances the desired safety effects. So why do we still light the old way? “There’s no good reason for it,” said Wirt. It’s habit.

What’s Bad for You

The deeper you get into the issue of bad bright light the more far reaching its effects appear. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, conservative estimates of annual energy waste in the United States tallies into the billions of dollars. That means more than money is going up in smoke. For a nation desperate enough for energy resources to invest billions in corn-based ethanol—a fuel that consumes more petroleum to make than it actually replaces when you add in what it takes to grow and harvest it—wasting energy on such a large scale seems contrary to national priorities. Considering further that most of that wasted energy is produced from coal and other carbon fuels that are responsible for global climate disruption, sky glow is a problem of national significance.

The over-abundance of light may be reeking havoc on wildlife also. As light pollution spreads, so do impacts on migratory birds, fish, and night foraging animals. Scientists now say artificial light is affecting the breeding cycles of salmon and other fish species. Even at the bottom of the food chain there are problems: Micro plankton that typically come near the surface to feed no longer ascend. It’s still unclear what the overall affects are from this phenomenon, but scientists know that changes at the bottom of the food chain will resonate throughout it.

Big fish and little plankton aren’t the only animals affected. The natural cycle of night and day plays out in every living thing. Called the circadian rhythm, it was first identified in the 1700s. It’s the universal 24-hour cycle of life. Scientists long ago figured out that workers on swing shifts face special health risks the rest of us don’t. More recently scientists identified a substantially increased risk of breast cancer among women who work the graveyard shift. More than light is disrupting their circadian rhythm, but artificial light is a factor.

What’s more, excess light in a child’s bedroom produces puzzling consequences:
According to a study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, children under two years of age who sleep with nightlights are more likely to become nearsighted.

The findings, published in Nature, showed that of children aged two to 16 who had slept in darkness before age two, 10 percent were myopic at the time of the study. Of children who had slept with a night light on before age two, 34 percent were myopic. And of children who had slept at night with a room light on before age two, 55 percent were myopic—more than a five-fold increase over the children who slept in darkness during early childhood. No one is suggesting we abolish night work or ban nightlights, but clearly we should be looking for ways to minimize the glare of unnecessary light.

Beyond the health and environmental effects are the social costs of light pollution. It ranks at the top of the list of thing people consider a nuisance. It’s right up there with mechanical noise and barking dogs (who might be barking to tell you to turn off the lights!).

Light trespass is the IDA term for light pollution that glares into your home from a neighbor’s house or business. It’s that streetlight that lights your bedroom instead of the street, the neighbor’s floodlight that floods your back porch, or the business down the street that keeps its bright sign turned on all night. It’s going into the backyard for a little quiet time under the stars with your spouse and instead noting in the bright light she’s noticing that your pores are becoming pronounced with age. It’s being completely robbed of the pleasure of darkness to the point that many kids growing up today have never seen the Milky Way.

It has been called the loss of one of our most basic connections with nature.

Dark Skies in Jefferson

Despite current trends, there may be darker skies in Jefferson County’s future. The draft of the zoning ordinance that’s been slogging its way through review and comment contains a section on outdoor lighting. It does not change existing lighting, nor does it require anyone to spend more money than they otherwise would on lighting fixtures. In accordance with IDA standards, it focuses on new construction and is primarily concerned with commercial lighting.

According to Lane Kendig, the lead consultant on the county’s new zoning ordinance, it is becoming more common for lighting to be addressed in local planning measures. “One of the first things neighbors complain about is bright glare from nearby businesses,” said Kendig.

Fortunately, he said, for new or upgraded commercial lighting, following a lighting ordinance does not create a burden on the business owner.

“At the neighbor level, it’s pretty easy to control light trespass and administer the ordinance, because lighting companies have to give you a lighting plan at 10-foot intervals across a site,” he said. If a lighting contractor presents a plan for zero light at the property line, for example, it’s the contractor who is responsible for making it so.

Having ordinances for residential lighting is not as easy. Zoning ordinances are technical documents—not always easy for a homeowner to understand. Then there is the job of ensuring the ordinance is followed. “Enforcement is hardest in residential because some landscape architect might tell a homeowner to light up all the trees,” said Kendig. “Or the guy wants his driveway to look like a landing site.”

Lighting ordinances help address the nuisance element of light trespass from one neighbor to another but don’t necessarily improve the quality of sky glow, particularly in metropolitan areas where there is so much light. But in rural regions dependent on countryside tourism, the ability to see stars is especially important. Vermont, for example, has made dark skies a statewide planning issue, said Kendig.

The Jefferson County zoning ordinance for commercial lighting represents an attempt to fix a complex array of problems in a sensible, civil way that even a libertarian might love. It’s a way that a small semi-rural county can act locally to take on a global challenge like climate disruption.

And although the ordinance does exclude most residential applications, it does address spotlights and floodlights that “create a glare condition for neighboring property owners or vehicular traffic on adjacent streets.” Who knows, it might even usher in a new era of appreciation of one part of Jefferson County’s heritage you don’t hear a lot about: the beautiful nighttime sky above the ridgeline.

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