Minutes - 20030224 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

"The other thing that I want to mention is because I found some common ground. I live in rural Alamance County, not far from what is called "Three College Observatory." I've been up there a couple of times with my children to observe the heavens, and the light pollution is a problem. It is getting worse, especially on a foggy night. The moisture in the air does cause a problem. And if you go out and look, you'll probably notice that some of the greatest offenders, unfortunately, are governmental agencies. You look at the highway lighting down I-85 and you look at the lighting over different municipalities. And it is going to be a tough issue to tackle unless municipalities and governmental lighting is included. And, again, I applaud Orange County because, based on my interpretation of the Ordinance, that has not been ignored. So, I think that is a goad step. "I mentioned seven things in the memo that was sent, which I will not go over again because you've gat them with you tonight, but I just wanted to mention a couple of highlights. "One is the Section 631.5, which refers to the submittal of plans and designs far lighting applications. This is of concern to Duke Power from the standpoint that, due to the volume of lighting and everything, it is going to be challenging for everything to be submitted and reviewed. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but the burden of the submittal and the approval process will fall upon the requesting party. And it would be up to a public utility like Duke Power since we would have to have that come in hand from the requesting party to us. That is not a service that could be performed under the current rate structure. So that translates into extra costs to a requesting party to have that submitted and brought to us, something that is approvable. Again, I don't think that Duke Power has a position on that. We are just making everybody aware that that is a direct action of the Ordinance that will take place. "A lot of lights that Duke Power puts in are situations where there is a farmer or somebody that has a convenience store or just somebody's gotten their own home and they want a light installed. Duke Power supplies lights under the North Carolina Utility Commission, which approves the light selection that is installed. And, currently, the guidelines we follow to put the lights up are fairly straightforward and our desire is that they remain so under the Ordinance. "The simplest way to do that is to make the foundational Ordinance the requirement of cut-off fixtures, which I think would probably address 90 percent of the light pollution, light trespass problem that we see today. The biggest irritant is the paint source of light that you see when you are outside looking at the light, and that light is not directed on the surface, it's directed out, and even a relatively small light from a distance will be an irritant just because of that point source that you can see. A cut-off fixture would address that and it is something very simple to do. "One caveat to that, to governmental agencies in that when you use cut-off fixtures, it requires more fixtures in a given area to illuminate the same surface such as a roadway. We first experimented with cut-off lighting in the Charlotte Metropolitan area over 20 years ago, and it has very many advantages, but one of its disadvantages is that often times it takes more lights in a distance to have the same uniformity ratio and the same illumination. "So, what that translates to is more cost for agencies requesting lights, DOT, municipalities, even private parties that want to illuminate a subdivision. I`m not saying that this is a bad thing. It is just a fact of life that will happen in many cases. "The other item I wanted to mention is the prohibition of mercury vapor. One thing to keep in mind on that is that, currently, that is the low-cost option as approved by the Utility