The
movement to reduce light pollution – to modify or replace glary outdoor light
fixtures that send “waste light” sideways and upward into the sky –
continues to gain momentum. In the area around Washington D.C., it is beginning
to approach something like critical mass, with a flurry of new laws and
practices recently passed or proposed.
Under Washington Mayor Anthony A. Williams (an amateur astronomer
himself), the city has developed plans to gradually replace polluting lights
with energy saving full-cutoff-shielded fixtures. Vanessa Dale Burns, director
of the city’s Department of Public Works, says, “Approximately 40,000 of the
66,000 streetlights in the city will ultimately be replaced with full cut-off
lighting under this policy.
In January the Board of Supervisors of Fauquier County, Virginia, passed
a new outdoor-lighting law to reduce the use of polluting fixtures. Fauquier is
about 50 miles west of D.C. and is a neighbor of Warren County, which has
already enacted such legislation. So have Virginia’s Albermarle and Hanover
countries.
Just north of D.C., Maryland’s Montgomery County is also considering
light pollution controls. In addition Nancy Kopp, a member of the Maryland House
of Representatives, is drafting state wide anti-light-pollution legislation.
Farther west of D.C. is Shenandoah National Park. The National Park
Service made efforts to limit light
pollution there for the November 1999 Leonid meteor shower and now plans to
redesign the park’s outdoor lighting system completely to help protect its
night skies.
All this activity prompted nearly 20 minuets of prime-time discussion
about light pollution on Maryland public television on February 2nd.
For more developments, see the web site of the International Dark Sky
Association at www.darksky.org.