LIMA — Bryan Boulanger remembers when he saw, really saw, the night sky. It was October 2007. Boulanger was camping with two friends in the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, where he had just started teaching civil engineering at Texas A&M University. He was 31 years old.
“We slept on the ground, and the night sky was amazing,” he said. “It was so fantastic, it was hard to fall asleep.”
During that wide-awake moment, he realized that he rarely saw the starscape that so bedazzled him that night. He’s not alone, especially in the developed world. About 80 percent of the world’s population can’t see the Milky Way, according to a new study.
“The night sky is a resource that’s vanishing,” he said. “I started to see light pollution as a civil engineering problem.”
Motivated by that moment and his love of the outdoors, Boulanger, now 40 and a professor at Ohio Northern University in Ada, is leading a team of students in a project to help Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming reduce its light pollution.
But there’s plenty of light pollution to combat here, too. A look at Lima on the website lightpollutionmap.info shows it glowing a dull orange, second only to red in the map’s radiance scale. Lights from heavy industry, parking lots, street lamps and dawn-to-dusk security lights are blocking our ability to see the night sky our grandparents saw. And experts say it’s affecting our ecosystem, our electricity bills and our health.
What is light pollution?
Light pollution is the adverse effect of artificial light. That includes light trespass (light falling where it is not wanted or needed), skyglow (Los Angeles’ skyglow can be seen from an aircraft 200 miles away), glare (excessive brightness that can hurt your eyes) and clutter (excessive groupings of light sources).
“Light pollution derives from light that’s not being used for the appropriate task, that’s just been put out there mindlessly,” said J. Scott Feierabend, executive director of the International Dark-Sky Association.
Michael Ritchie, a long-time member of Lima’s Schoonover Observatory in Schoonover Park, said the “indiscriminate use” of outdoor lighting has diminished what can be seen from the observatory.
“The light produced by this city is way beyond what a city of this size would be,” he said, noting that Lima’s population has gone down since the observatory’s creation in 1964.
The best examples of inappropriate are mercury vapor street lights and security lights in which the entire bulb is exposed, allowing the light to go up, down and sideways. Feierabend called these lights “glare bombs.” Such inefficient and unnecessary light is not only a waste of energy; Feierabend said research is showing it’s harmful to humans and wildlife.
“Sea turtles, born on the coast, like in Florida, are a great example,” he said. “These hatchlings are hardwired to head toward the moon and stars, but they become disoriented by all the near-shore lighting and have been found migrating towards the condos and hotels.”
LEDs: solution, or new problem?
One lighting solution, at least when it comes to energy conservation, is light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.
“These things just use a fraction of the wattage that metal halides used,” said Howard Elstro, Lima’s director of public safety. “Their longevity saves on maintenance.”
Lima is one of many cities that have taken part in what the IDA calls an LED “retrofit revolution.” Seven years ago, Lima swapped out its old traffic signals and one-third of its street lights in favor of ones containing LEDs. Elstro said the city’s been pushing the utility AEP, which owns the remaining two-thirds of Lima’s street lights, to do the same.
Schoonover Observatory’s Michael Ritchie said they may be saving the city money, but the LED streetlights are not saving the dark sky.
“They’re not shielded properly, and they’re the wrong type to begin with,” said Ritchie. “They’re full spectrum, very bright.” Such high-intensity, short-wavelength (blue) light actually scatters farther into the atmosphere than long-wavelength (red) light, causing more glare. Recent research has found white LED light can make skyglow worse. And researchers say blue light disrupts sleep patterns.
IDA urges community officials to weigh “the promise of cheaper outdoor lighting” against other factors before conducting a retrofit.
Dark Sky Places
One of the ways IDA advocates for less light pollution is through its Dark Sky Places conservation program. Communities must reduce their light pollution and educate the public about the importance of dark skies in order to be designated a Dark Sky Community, Park, Sanctuary, Reserve or Development of Distinction.
Most of the 10 Dark Sky Communities are west of the Mississippi River, but one is surprisingly close to Lima: Beverly Shores, Indiana. The little town of 619 sits on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and is surrounded by the Indiana Dunes National Park.
At the urging of residents Alan and Rosemary Bell, the town got rid of unnecessary streetlights, reducing them from 61 to 48. They installed fully-shielded lamps so the light illuminated streets instead of the sky. Total cost: $10,000, split between a residents’ association and public donations.
“The town just kept writing checks!” said Rosemary Bell of her neighbors. “We had to stop the donations.”
“Air pollution, water pollution, is a tough fight,” said Alan Bell. “But light pollution is something you can do something about.”
Yellowstone
ONU professor Bryan Boulanger’s project in Yellowstone National Park is designed to help it become an IDA-certified Dark Sky Place. Yellowstone landscape architect Lynn Chan, who’s spearheading the application, said she first became aware of the need for new lighting 20 years ago.
“We had lighting that was not appropriate to our historic district, that was really glaring and way too bright,” she said.
The application requires an inventory of all 5,000 of the light fixtures throughout the 3,500-acre park.
“I got Old Faithful done and I thought, there’s no way I could do this,” she said.
When Boulanger approached park officials, seeking a civil engineering project for his students, he was told to talk to Chan, who immediately thought of the light inventory.
“He’s been awesome,” Chan said of Boulanger. “He’s done all the logistics and the technology behind it all. I just made sure he had all the support from the park and management.”
“Yellowstone has always had a place in my heart,” said Boulanger. “It represents what’s left of wilderness in the Lower 48 states. I thought maybe they’d have problems that needed work on from a civil engineer.”
Student experience
Boulanger took 10 students on two data-gathering camping trips to Yellowstone, most recently in August. Using a smart phone app that Boulanger helped design, students documented the location and type of every exterior light in the park, whether it was working, and what kind and strength of light the fixture emitted. This required working at night.
“It was cold,” said 19-year-old sophomore Payton Green. “You had to bring two sets of clothes, because it’s so hot during the day.”
Max Roberts, 20, a sophomore, said the project has him seeing light pollution everywhere.
“Everywhere I go, I’m analyzing light fixtures,” he said.
Unfortunately, they didn’t get a good view of the Milky Way. The night skies were cloudy throughout their August trip. But they finished the inventory, doing over the course of several weeks what would have taken Lynn Chan several years.
Security, the 200-pound gorilla
The very darkness they were trying to preserve also made the case for artificial light. Green said she “got a little nervous” before her first nighttime outing, as Boulanger told her how to watch for bears.
“In our business, one man’s light pollution is another man’s night light,” said Lima Public Works director Elstro. “People want street lights for a feeling of security.”
IDA’s Feierabend, who called security “the 200-pound gorilla in the room,” said there’s very little in the way of “hard, rigorous science” proving a correlation between lots of light and increased safety.
A study of alleyway lighting in Chicago suggested that bright lights actually made it easier for criminals to work. But the research is far from conclusive, and Feierabend said more needs to be done.
A loss of awe
There’s little debate when it comes to the loss of awe caused by bright light at night. Vincent van Gogh could not paint his 1889 masterpiece, “The Starry Night,” in the French village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence today. That night sky is not visible anymore by the naked eye, only through telescopes.
“That is the same sky that my great-grandfather saw growing up in Maine,” said Bryan Boulanger. “That’s the same night sky that you can see in other parts of the world.”
Boulanger is one of many who believe it’s worth protecting.
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