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A New Dark Age
Reducing Light Pollution in the Four Corners and Beyond
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When Angie Richmond first visited Chaco Canyon as a summer volunteer in 1998, the unobstructed views of the night sky were glorious - and helped her to set a course toward a career in astronomy.
At the same time, Richmond noticed something else. "Domes" of light around Chaco's desert horizon increasingly interfered with the nightly observations that she and others made using a 25-inch telescope to explore the cosmos.
"We counted a dozen light sources, from Gallup, Grants, Santa Fe, even from Albuquerque 150 miles way," Richmond recalls. "It became increasingly obvious that urban light was casting a glow that obscured the stars and planets." For her senior thesis as an astrophysics major at the University of New Mexico, she collected the first baseline lighting measurements at Chaco, where ancient residents also studied and perhaps worshiped the nighttime sky.
Today, Richmond is an astronomy guide at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Once again, she deals with light pollution - from towns like Montrose, Grand Junction, Delta, and on some nights, Denver. She conducts sky tours for amateur astronomers who travel hundreds of miles to find conditions available only in the isolated West, as well as many foreign visitors who seek starry skies that have literally disappeared in densely populated areas of Europe and Asia.
Nighttime glare is an increasingly worrisome concern in many southwestern communities ? where dark, alluring skies are dramatic draws for tourists, scientists, and established residents and newcomers.
Consider some recent developments in the Four Corners:
Nighttime skiing, clearly a revenue boon for resorts and winter tourism, sends huge amounts of reflected light into the sky. Now most ski areas shut their lights off by 9 p.m.
A community founded in 2003 called Arizona Sky Village, near Portal in Cochise County, quickly sold out all 85 building lots. The development was located because of its intensely dark skies that stargazers prize.
Even in the darkest rural areas of the Southwest, about 2,000 stars typically may be visible to the unaided eye - half the number seen in centuries past, say area astronomers.
Advocates of keeping skies dark note that the heavens are not dimming, but since the Industrial Revolution, the Earth has become brighter. Added to that are airborne residues from manufacturing and natural pollutants that make the atmosphere less transparent and more reflective of ground-level light sources.
Anyone who has sat under a moonless sky in the Mountain West knows the astonishing feeling that comes when a meteor streaks across the firmament. It is that primeval rush that dark-sky proponents want to preserve for future generations of skywatchers.
"Many people who flip on their backyard floodlights or insist on bright neighborhood street lighting find it hard to understand that darkness is a natural resource, just like forests and water," says John Grahame, head of Dark Skies Coalition in Flagstaff. "And that resource is threatened more and more by poorly focused outdoor nighttime lights."
Ill-conceived, ineffective, and inefficient lighting - especially outdoor light aimed into the sky, called "uplight" - costs the nation about $10.4 billion a year and generates 38 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, according estimates by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), a nonprofit headquartered in Tucson that aims to curtail light pollution. There also is growing evidence that artificial light can interfere with reproductive and navigational processes in wildlife, thus endangering biodiversity. Studies also indicate that light at night also affects humans by suppressing production of melatonin, a hormone some studies have linked to breast and prostate cancers.
The IDA, founded by astronomers more than 20 years ago, has recruited more than 12,000 members in 75 countries. "We are about good lighting, not no lighting," says IDA Managing Director Peter Strasser. However, his modern-day light brigade is hard-pressed to keep pace with population growth, urban development, and the changing technology of lighting. In the brightly lit cities where half the U.S. population now lives, a dozen stars may be viewable on a clear night.
Recent findings and events illustrate the extent of the problem.
In Death Valley, one of America's most unspoiled parks, only the full moon outshines the neon halo of Las Vegas, 120 miles away. Chad Moore, U.S. National Park Service night-sky manager, reported last year that after taking night-sky readings at 45 national parks, he found that the glare of city lights as much as 200 miles away could visibly alter a park's night lightscape.
And, dark-sky advocates enjoy telling about when the 1994 Northridge earthquake cut power in Los Angeles. Calls flooded emergency centers from people who had poured into the streets in the predawn hours. They had looked into the dark sky to see what some anxiously described as a "giant silvery cloud" over the shaken city.
Not to worry, they were assured. It was merely the Milky Way, the vast galaxy that humans once knew so well - until the glare from electric light effectively erased most traces of it from urban skies.
A couple of years ago, Paul Bogard, who graduated with a Ph.D. in literature in environment from the University of Nevada/Reno, was curious about how writers and artists valued darkness as inspiration in their lives and their work. He invited dozens of individuals to contribute essays on the topic, and the result is a recent book that Bogard edited, Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark (University of Nevada Press, 2008).
"In a world full of problems that can seem beyond our grasp," Bogard writes, "stopping the spread and effects of light pollution offers an opportunity we don't often get: a serious environmental problem we - each of us individually, and all together - can do something about."
"The light pollution blocking our view of the stars is only the most obvious result of artificial night lighting," he notes. "Our lack of attention to the spread of these lights mirrors a lack of appreciation for night's ancient gifts of quiet, peace, and time to be with those we love. And, perhaps most seriously, as we've diluted the darkness, so have we negatively affected ecosystems in ways we're only beginning to understand."
Today, communities around the planet are competing to curb unwanted nighttime light. A declaration by the UNESCO International Starlight Initiative asserted that "an unpolluted night sky that allows the enjoyment and contemplation of the firmament should be considered an inalienable right of humankind equivalent to all other environmental, social, and cultural rights," and the program plans to honor places that preserve and enhance low-skylight conditions.
Over the Four Corners, skies are among the darkest in the United States - despite considerable commercial and residential growth in the past decade. Low-light conditions in the area have garnered considerable recognition among astronomers and other environmental advocates.
In 2007, the IDA designated Natural Bridges National Monument as its first International Dark Sky Park in a program recognizing exceptional commitment to dark-sky preservation. Located in southeastern Utah and attracting some 95,000 visitors a year, Natural Bridges is notable for its lack of light pollution - which the IDA defines as "any adverse effect of artificial light, including sky glow, glare, light trespass, light clutter, decreased visibility at night, and energy waste."
IDA's International Dark Sky Park program challenged Natural Bridges officials to minimize the park's nocturnal impact by retrofitting more than 80 percent of its light fixtures, shielding them so all the light points downward. Most of these outdoor fixtures use 13-watt compact fluorescent light bulbs that provide ample light but prevent stray light from the visitor center and park ranger residences from interfering with the campground and backcountry.
Previously, in 2001, the IDA designated Flagstaff as the world's first International Dark Sky City for community actions designed to reduce unwanted night lights. This included such things as replacing high-pressure sodium and mercury vapor lights, redirecting outdoor lights toward the ground, shielding fixtures around highways and malls, and approving citywide ordinances to regulate lighting design. (Flagstaff, home of nearby Lowell Observatory, passed the first city lighting ordinance in 1958, which banned advertising search lights.)
In 2005, Durango's City Council approved a plan first proposed in 2002 to restrict unnecessary exterior illumination on all commercial and industrial buildings as well as all municipal lights. However, there were a few loopholes in the law, including the exclusion of homes and residences and a provision that businesses with existing outdoor lighting were exempt unless they expanded through use of a building permit. As a result, many malls continue to use so-called "wall packs" that spread light in all directions across mostly empty parking lots through the night.
"What people don't realize is that dark sky does not have to mean dark ground," says Anthony Arrigo, who started a company called Starry Night Lights in Park City, Utah. His business sells night-sky friendly residential and commercial lighting to builders and homeowners across the country. "It is understandable that people want to have enough light to see adequately when they are walking at night, and to feel safe from crime or moving vehicles. But the newer technologies certainly allow safety without the over-lighting that we see today."
Using fairly simple designs, aiming lights downward, and shielding light sources can provide excellent illumination for city streets, highways, and even football stadiums - but keep the spillage into the night sky to a minimum. Use of reflectors and passive guides on roads direct light where drivers need it and do not require electricity.
The IDA provides information to city planners, architects, and businesses on mitigating actions to enhance lighting solutions and increase energy efficiency. In some cases, that could mean automatic dimmers or sensors, or filters and site-specific designs that create a more evenly illuminated nighttime environment that not only reduces crime but eradicates "light trespass" - unwanted light streaming into residential windows.
And while lighting is often installed in the name of safety, say a growing number of public safety experts, it may ironically benefit criminals. A pedestrian temporarily blinded by the glow of an ATM, for instance, may be an easier target for a mugger hiding in the shadows. In fact, most light that goes directly from its source to a person's eye is harmful to vision. Such glare - from a car's high beams, a poorly aimed porch light, or even an unshielded window - inhibits night vision, paradoxically making it harder to see.
Residents and businesses throughout the Four Corners increasingly recognize the attraction of clear night skies for tourism, scientific research, and aesthetics. And no one in the dark-sky movement wants to burden homeowners or businesses by forcing them to retrofit their buildings. Light pollution "isn't our nation's biggest problem," Grahame admits, "but it's one of the easier environmental problems to fix. You can refocus a light bulb, and it's done." Their only goal, say dark-sky advocates, is to preserve a valuable natural resource for future generations.
"Light pollution is like having thick smoggy air that would only let you see a quarter of the way across the Grand Canyon," says Chris Luginbuhl, an astronomer with the U.S. Naval Observatory near Flagstaff. "Or, it would be like driving to the Tetons and not being able to see the peaks. People who live and visit here just wouldn't stand for that."
Stan Wellborn is a recovering journalist who divides his time between Washington, D.C., where he has a day job, and Mancos, Colo., where he enjoys the sky both day and night.
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