[Vision2020] Lights, Poetry and Public Safety

Thu Feb 3 14:59:33 PST 2005

The issue is not having lights "off."   The issue is directing the lights more, so leakage is not so extreme, both up to the sky and beyond property lines.  

It is not simply a "County" issue.  The City of Moscow is in the process of writing a more comprehensive light ordinance.  And ordinances can be written to require the new rules to apply to new construction, and grandfather the non-conforming until something needs to be replaced or for an extended period of time, as the Moscow ordinance attempts to do.

The lighting portion is a small part of a very large land use document in the County, and I couldn't agree more with you or Jeff or the others who are seeking additonal comment and input on a living, breathing, evolving ordinance that will most definitely affect the quality of life.  

All I was suggesting is that it is not unreasonable to try to require the innovations in light containment that have become routinely available.  Lighting technology has progressed to the point where these are sound and reasonable requirements in many instances that will protect the rest of us from others' lights.  The better option in my mind is not to oppose an ordinance that attempts to address light leakage, or for that matter, smell leakage from a nearby hog feedlot or sound or dust leakage from a nearby rock crushing quarry, but to consider whether the restrictions are reasonable and feasible, and whether the imposition on neighbors from the use of one's property is something that should be tolerated, ameliorated or eliminated.

Bruce Livingston

  ----- Original Message ----- 

  From: Janice Willard 
  To: 'Vision 2020' 
  Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 1:26 PM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Lights, Poetry and Public Safety

  Hi Visionaries,

  I do appreciate the poetic approach to the lighting issue as I am also one who loves the night sky and lives to appreciate the beauty of nature.  In fact, I often leave my yard lights off for just this purpose, reveling in the incredible quiet and blanketing darkness, the moon, the stars and the auroras.  At night, sound really carries and I can hear planes revving up in Moscow Pullman Airport 10 miles away.  But often all I hear is a sandpiper calling from the streambed or a dog barking a mile away. The beautiful, quiet, darkness is something I love the best about living here. However, I feel that an important point here is not being appreciated that I want to re-iterate.

  People in the country do not leave their lights on because they want to mess up the star-gazing of their neighbors.  They leave them on for reasons of safety and security: having adequate lighting around farm buildings is a deterrent to crime. The equipment sheds and tool sheds often contain valuable items and having a well lit yard is one of the primary ways to prevent the buildings from being broken into. Having a lock on the door doesn't cut it--people can break a window or jimmy the lock.

  Now everyone in town knows this as well.  All the parking lots, public walkways and streets are lit as a safety measure and deterrent to crime. And truth be told, it is the towns that generate a huge amount of light at night--why else would you be coming out to the country side to see the stars?  Why are you asking the farmers to turn out their yard lights, when you are not asking the malls, stores, Universities and city to first turn out theirs?  And if the lights are on in these location, for the express purpose of safety and security, why are people in town afforded this and not people in the country?   I remember that a very wise man once said that one should take the log out of your own eye before trying to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.  

  Remember also that in the country, police and ambulance service is a long way off.  This is not a cut of the Sheriff's department, just a reality of country living--you are often on your own. So if someone in Harvard thinks there is a thief in one of their outbuildings and doesn't want to confront them directly, they may call and find out that the nearest deputy is in Deary. Having lighted outbuildings deters crime, so this is a good reason to use them.     

  I suspect that the main reasons for writing this particular rule have little to do with farmers and more to due with preventing lighting on outdoor signs, which do point upward.  But it was written in such a way to target country people for doing the very sensible thing of having adequate lighting on their buildings.  No wonder, that many of the people out in the county, when looking into town and seeing the great glow of city lights in the sky, would wonder why they are being targeted?  "Why don't you turn out your own damn lights first," is what I envision them muttering.  And this kind of town/county divide is not good for county cohesiveness.  

  Which turns us back to the wordage of the county ordinance--how can this be written in such a way that it prevents un-necessary outdoor lights but allows people who live in the county to use their traditional crime deterrent lighting where it is necessary?  I really do not believe that the zoning committee's intention was to prevent people from deterring crime on their property--which is why public comment is such an essential part of this process, so that things that are missed can be addressed and corrected. I do not see this as an adversarial process, or rather, it certainly doesn't need to be. The most beneficial thing for our entire extended Latah County community to function better is to allow people to help draft a document that works, not tell people to suck it up if they don't like something. No one on the zoning committee gave me the impression that they wanted to lord it over people and push an agenda.  They seemed very interested in creating a workable document.  Finding things that need to be corrected in the document is very much a part of this process.

  And in reality, for those of you star gazers who love the quiet night sky around Moscow, as much as I do, the yard lights on farms is going to be no more than a fire fly in comparison to the huge amount of light and noise pollution that will occur if the school district goes ahead with their plan to build a god-awful, mega-complex, country club, high school out in the farmland in north east Moscow.  With all the lights needed around its buildings, illuminating its planned play fields, football stadium, auditorium and parking lots --like the Junior High only a whole lot bigger and brighter and noisier--there will be no more night sky for anyone to appreciate from Moscow north to Moscow Mountain!  You will need to go past Viola if you want to appreciate the stars.  But somehow it is okay for the city to raid the country and destroy the country environment when they imagine they have a need......

  Geeze, and you are worried about some poor farmer who is trying to keep thieves out of his tool shed.........          

  JW  

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