Over the years, people have become aware that their night skies are no longer dark, and the views of the stars and Milky Way now require a trip to the desert to see. 92% of the US population now lives where the Milky Way is invisible and the night skies are no longer dark.
Here in Crestwood Hills, we have a restful, quiet, oasis just a few minutes from the hubbub of the city. We all love living here because of that. And one of the reasons is the absence of streetlights and strong lighting ordinances. It creates a slightly darker environment for sleeping and enjoying the night, even though we are surrounded by the lights of the city.
And we can continue to keep it that way:
- Make sure no outdoor lighting, decorative or other, shines up to the sky. Remember, light going up lights up the sky and causes general sky glow that makes it difficult to sleep at night. Not to mention the other ecological reasons not to do so. (See below)
- Make sure the source of the light is not visible from the street. A hood over the lights will direct all light where it needs to be without illuminating areas where illumination is not needed (like in the eyes of a driver). A great type of porch light can be seen at 1201 Kenter, and a pair of hooded motion-detector walk lights that cast no light off property.
- Make sure your lighting does not intrude on your neighbors. Your lights should end at your property. I have a 13W halogen fixture that lights my entire patio as bright as a 150W floodlight but throws no light past my property. And the source of the bulb isn’t visible unless you’re directly under the fixture. Having your light go onto someone else’s property is called “Light Trespass” and is enforceable in the Los Angeles City Code SEC. 93.0117. OUTDOOR LIGHTING AFFECTING RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY. The city will require the shield or hood annoying light fixtures, and even remove them if they exceed 2 candle lumens on any window, patio, porch, outdoor recreation area.
- If you have outdoor porch lighting and yard lighting, turn it off when you go to bed. If you want to have lights on if people are around, try putting them on a motion detector switch so they’re off unless someone is there. That way, the presence of the light itself will alert you to someone’s presence.
- Use the minimum wattage necessary to light the area. When I moved in, I had two 300W spotlights on the side of my house to light the patio, now lit by the 13W full cutoff fixture. The neighbor above me had multiple 500W “stadium” lights on his house for years (until remodeling) and you could see his house from Marina del Rey. When the lights were off, you couldn’t see his house from the street. When they were on, he might as well have put up a neon sign, “Steal here!”. His lights starkly illuminated 7 different houses down the street.
Good lighting can be effective. The city of Galena, Illinois, among many who have done so, enacted strict lighting ordinances, and though they are not many miles from Dubuque, Iowa, they have a night sky with the magnificent Milky Way running across it. Yet, when I was there, I never felt the area to be poorly lighted.
One organization, the International Dark-Sky Association, or IDA, got started 26 years ago to combat the loss of the night sky. Professional astronomers were becoming worried that, within another generation, observing the night sky wouldn’t be possible from anywhere on Earth if the growth of light pollution continued.
A few things were learned along the way. Darkness at night is important for many reasons:
- It allows plants time to rest and for water to sink deeper into the ground
- It allows species of fauna that require darkness to be free to be out, and to hunt. When the environment is too bright, the nocturnal species leave and only those that live well with humans remain, and that is not enough diversity for a healthy ecology.
- It allows a melatonin cycle in humans, the interruption of which may be one of the reasons for increased diseases.
- It allows hatchlings to rest free from the eyes of predators and allows sea turtles, born on land, to follow instincts and head for the ocean. In areas of excessive lighting, sea turtle hatchlings head for higher ground, and die.
- Safety. Contrary to many expectations, the highest crime areas are also the most brightly lit. Chicago did an experiment, inadvertently, by putting more lights in a high crime area and watched crime go up. The people called for, and got, more lighting and crime went up again. In the other areas, including adjacent ones in Chicago, crime continued its decline, as has been the case over the whole US. Glare from outside lights apparently gives people with nefarious intent places to hide, and allows them to size up their victims in advance.
- Driving safety. We need the roads lit to avoid hazards, but the glare from lights annoys us and makes pedestrians less visible. Paradoxically, studies show there is an optimum level of lighting on a street, and it is lower than most places in America. Glare from lights also makes it difficult to see oncoming traffic well, especially if our windshields are a little dirty.
- Extra lighting costs municipalities money, and causes greater use of energy and concomitant damage to the environment and contribution to global warming.
So the IDA decided to work with cities and lighting designers. If a light fixture could put the same light on the ground with less wattage, that manufacturer would have an advantage over competitors in this era of high energy costs (remember Gray Davis?).
And today there are hundreds of correct lighting fixtures that illuminate the ground without shining up. If that type of fixture were the only kind of lighting used, all our streets would be lit but the night skies would still be there and the Milky Way would be visible overhead. Here is a listing of Dark Sky Approved Lighting from an online retailer.
Six years ago, Los Angeles passed an ordinance requiring that all new and replacement street lighting be of the correct kind. With hundreds of thousands of lighting fixtures, this stood to save LA money in energy costs and even lawsuit costs as motorists sued over not being able to see something they could have avoided with non-glaring lighting. The characteristics of the new lighting are:
- No light goes above the horizontal–all goes down and partially to the sides.
- Each fixture has a reflector behind the bulb to increase lumens on the ground with lower wattage.
By so doing, LA found that only about 1/3 as much power was needed per fixture to illuminate the ground well. Want to see an example? Cahuenga Boulevard is beside the 101 freeway through the Cahuenga pass. Look over at the street–it’s well lit. But you can’t see the light sources at all from the freeway. And when you drive on Cahuenga, only the light directly above is visible and all the upcoming lights are just not noticeable–no glare in your eyes or on a dusty windshield.
We now have other challenges to overcome–LED streetlights and stoplights, LCD billboards, and even older billboards with the light on the bottom shining up instead of the top shining down. But progress is being made. The older lighting fixtures are gradually disappearing from the market.
Over the years, LA’s night will be getting darker, but municipalities around LA haven’t discovered the value of good lighting yet. When they do, we will once again return a legacy to our children–one we have stolen away with a century of cheap electricity–the night sky.
Want more information?
See: http://www.darksky.org/education-53 to see a host of publications on lighting issues.
Also: http://www.darksky.org/resources-54 to read more on the ecological side of light pollution.
I’m also free to talk about lighting if needed.
Don Pensack
1200 N. Kenter Ave.