ORD-2003-037 - Outdoor Lighting Standards Zoning Ordinance Amendment

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 0011, "As the staff said, the last five years have been brutal on the sky. i came in tonight to encourage you to see this Ordinance through to completion. it is very important right now in Orange County as the rural buffer zone is being heavily developed. It is such a simple problem to solve as Mark said.. "The idea is simply to have people buy fixtures that light what they want lit. You look at these domes of light that half of the light is going up into space, that is just energy that is wasted. "The first night that Carrboro turned on their new Municipal home, I thought Carrboro was burning down from my little property, which is about 12 miles away because of the huge dome that it put up that was not there the night before. So I drove down the next day and immediately recognized what the problem was, at least thank God Carrboro didn't bum down. "But that's why this is so important; it just takes a few lights with excess energy being wasted with this tremendous wattage going up into the air, particularly during the summer season, where humidity is high in the air, you tend to trap all that light and the moisture and it produces these light domes which are as polluting as if you had put chemicals in the water to the air. Fortunately it is much simpler to solve this problem than it is a lot of types of pollution, because every major light fixture company in the country has fixtures that conform to a large number of these Ordinances all other the country. "And so it is not even a problem of shopping or finding the right thing. Every one of them make conforming and non - conforming fixtures and it is just a simple matter for the architects to specify conforming fixtures and it saves the tenants a lot of money. So there are very few people who find a problem with it and the power companies are typically the only people who find a problem with it and even those people are trying hard to be responsible about energy savings and it is a very tough argument for them to bring up other than trying to preserve. °You know in a lot of jurisdictions they make a quick retrofit and that is a big problem. Here, the Ordinance is not proposing a retrofit until the particular fixture needs to be replaced. So. it is all just going forward and that is why it is so important with the development that is going on in the county. 610 "So I felt like I needed to come forward and encourage all the people involved with this. And I have say the staff of Orange County has done a remarkable job of research and looking at Ordinances in other parts of the country and looking at the engineering aspects of it and looking at the basic common sense application of it without going either overboard or not having an effective Ordinance and I hope that in some form similar to the draft it will get eventually accepted. Thank you." Ron Osborne: "Thank you. My name is Ron Osborne, and I am here tonight representing Duke Power regarding the Ordinance. My position with Duke Power is that I am the Engineering Supervisor for the Durham, Burlington, Chapel Hill service areas which encompasses all of Orange County. Most of Durham County, Alamance County, parts of Guilford, counties to the north and south and everything. I wanted to lead off by saying that I am heartened by the actions the County is taking with regard to light pollution and light trespass and I think that something that needs to be addressed probably in most jurisdictions. I applaud Orange County for taking a look at it