Orange County NC Website
dome that it put up that was not there the night before. So I drove down the next day and <br />immediately recognized what the problem was, at least Carrboro didn't burn down. <br />"But that's why this is so important; it just takes a few lights with excess energy being <br />wasted with this tremendous wattage going up into the air. This is particularly true during the <br />summer season, where humidity is high in the air and you tend to trap all that light and the <br />moisture and it produces these light domes which are as polluting as if you had put chemicals in <br />the water to the air. Fortunately it is much simpler to solve this problem than it is a lot of types <br />of pollution, because every major light fixture company in the country has fixtures that conform <br />to a large number of these Ordinances. <br />"And so it is not even a problem of shopping or finding the right thing. Every one of them <br />makes conforming and non-conforming fixtures and it is just a simple matter for the architects to <br />specify conforming fixtures and it saves the tenants a lot of money. So there are very few <br />peaple who find a problem with it and the power companies are typically the only people wha <br />find a problem with it and even those people are trying hard to be responsible about energy <br />savings and it is a very tough argument for them. <br />"You know in a lot of jurisdictions they make a quick retrofit and that is a big problem. <br />Here, the Ordinance is not proposing a retrofit until the particular fixture needs to be replaced. <br />So it is all just going forward and that is why it is so important with the development that is going <br />on in the county. <br />"So I felt like I needed to come forward and encourage all the people involved with this. <br />And I have to say the staff of Orange County has done a remarkable job of research and lacking <br />at Ordinances in other parts of the country and looking at the engineering aspects of it and <br />looking at the basic common sense application of it without going either overboard or not having <br />an effective Ordinance and I hope that in some form similar to the draft it will get eventually <br />accepted. Thank you." <br />Ron Osborne: "Thank you. My name is Ron Osborne, and I am here tonight representing Duke <br />Power regarding the Ordinance. My position with Duke Power is that I am the Engineering <br />Supervisor for the Durham, Burlington, Chapel Hill service areas that encompasses all of <br />Orange County, most of Durham County, Alamance County, and parts of Guilford, counties to <br />the north and south and everything. I wanted to lead off by saying that I am heartened by the <br />actions the County is taking with regard to light pollution and light trespass and I think that this is <br />something that needs to be addressed probably in most jurisdictions. I applaud Orange County <br />far taking a look at it. <br />"Duke's interest in this is to make sure that the Ordinance is simple to follow which will <br />equate to compliance, which will equate to effectiveness. And to that end, and to the intent of <br />trying to limit light trespass, the remarks that we have provided are geared toward that. Let me <br />just say a couple of things because I appreciated the preceding speakers. <br />"The first thing is that part of my business is to look at lights all the time whenever I'm <br />riding down the road so I know how everybody feels when you start thinking about things and <br />you start looking up. And I do see lights all the time that are creating problems. And it is relatively <br />simple to fix them. And I think that the Ordinance can address that. <br />