I have been an avid stargazer for many years, particularly in the last 15 or so. Unfortunately, I live in suburban Boston and have watched, year by year, as the light pollution gets worse and worse. When I first moved to the suburban house we live in now, I could sometimes still see the Milky Way late at night. Not anymore.
Pretty much all I have ever done about light pollution in the past has been to complain to my wife and anyone who would listen. My wife would repeatedly tell me to stop complaining and do something about it, but I didn’t really listen. That was bound to change at some point. More on that below.
A few years ago, my wife and I were fortunate enough to be able to buy a second home on a lake in southern Maine. When we bought it, I was thinking about pretty lake waters and lovely daytime vistas, not the night skies. But I soon discovered that the house, which sits near the end of a quiet private road, is in a Bortle 3-4 zone, with much darker skies than our place in suburban Boston, particularly in the fall and winter when many seasonal residents leave for the southern states. As result I now spend even more time under the stars. But, of course, those starry skies have made me even more aware of streetlights and a few neighbors’ overly bright and misdirected outdoor lighting. But still I just complained and complained about light pollution until my wife would regularly roll her eyes and others to whom I had complained over and over just laughed at me (albeit in a good-natured way).
Then several months ago, I happened to be at the lake house, and I just casually opened the annual newsletter of the lake association, and as I was flipping through it, something jumped off the page at me: a short and succinct one paragraph article about light pollution. I shouted out to my wife “holy ****, someone else cares about this stuff!” I was like a giddy little kid in an ice cream shop. Impressed and inspired, I contacted the writer, a sweet quiet woman named Barbara who is the lake association historian, to thank her for her article. She happened to tell me that the lake association annual meeting was soon coming up, and she invited me to come speak at the meeting about the issue of light pollution. I told her that I wasn’t sure how receptive the audience, expected to be 75-100 homeowners, would be to this issue, but she assured me that many members shared our concerns about light pollution.
So, a week later, with my wife’s loving encouragement, I did just that. Nothing major or long or particularly inciteful, but I did speak, leading to a round of applause from the crowd. I say this not to pat myself on the back, because I was nervous and stumbled through most of what I said, but to report that there are other people out there thinking about this issue, not just us Cloudynights nerds.
At this point, I was feeling pretty stoked and motivated after having finally spoke up about light pollution. I’d scheduled a lunch with the Barbara so that we could meet to discuss what else we might do to combat light pollution. And because the annual meeting of our neighborhood association (a smaller subset of the broader lake association) and affiliated private road association, was coming up, I planned to attend that meeting and speak again about light pollution.
And then….
As I wrote in a separate thread back in early August, just a few days before the local neighborhood and road association meeting, Central Maine Power slapped up an unshielded LED streetlight directly across the street from my house, in an area of the neighborhood that previously had no streetlight and was one of the darkest areas around. The light cast a super bright white, harsh light as much as 180 feet away, including across our driveway and more than 40 feet across our front lawn and into our primary bedroom window. (The streetlight, I later learned, had supposedly been installed at the request of our private road association, but in the wrong location. I still don’t know if this was true).
I have to say that the appearance of that streetlight was like a kick in the teeth. It sapped me of my motivation on the light pollution front and made me depressed, for reasons I couldn’t fully articulate at the time. (Later one of the 20-somethings I mentor aptly described it as ruining my Zen-space.)
But with my wife’s encouragement, I picked myself up and vowed that I would still meet with Barbara and to go to the upcoming lake association and road association meeting and speak about light pollution in general and about the new abomination of a streetlight in particular.
I am happy to report a somewhat positive outcome. First, I had that lunch meeting Barbara. We sat for an hour and discussed the typical frustrations and concerns about light pollution, but also about what me might do about the problem, both locally and more regionally. She was, for the second time, an inspiration, encouraging me to keep fighting on, in the first instance about that blasted CMP streetlight and then the bigger light pollution problem.
Second, I was able to talk about the adverse impact of the streetlight on my house and the broader issue of light pollution at the association meeting in early August with about 50 owners in attendance. A few owners later expressed interest in the light pollution problem, in significantly for me, I was able to get the commitment of the road association to look into the new streetlight situation. Later, after a lot of back and forth with the association president, the road association requested that CMP relocate the streetlight to its supposed intended location about 3/4 of a mile way, and CMP finally did that just this week. I'd have preferred it just be removed and permanently taken out of service, since someone else will now be impacted by the light. But I'll still count it as a small victory.
On a related note, I have repeatedly requested to the road association that shielding be added to all the streetlights in wider neighborhood but was told that CMP has claimed that shields aren't available. I had suspected that that was not true—darksky.org even warns that utilities are often less than forthcoming with accurate information about lighting options, and based on the input of other members in response to my original thread, it’s clear that shields ARE available for the exact model of streetlights in our neighborhood. It’s useful to know that you apparently must be persistent on these issues, so I will continue to press the road association and CMP on that point.
One more small bit of positive news: As a result of speaking at the road association meeting in August, I was recently asked to write a short article about light pollution for the lake association annual newsletter. I’ve done that and am waiting for the issue to come out. Who knows whether anyone even reads these things or whether the article will have any impact, but I feel like it’s at least a step in the right direction.
So, I guess the point of all this is that we can just sit and complain about light pollution, like I did for so long, and nothing will change. Or we can refuse to accept what we’re dealt and can instead speak up, complain, educate, and sometimes maybe we’ll make a small difference. It’s worth a try.
Tim
