Orange County NC Website
like that that we have been working with the industry and have been applying same of these <br />new concepts with some new projects that have been coming an line an a volunteer basis. So <br />we are optimistic that these are both functional and usable by the development community and <br />by the electric contractors and by the power companies. If there are any questions for me that I <br />will be able to field them, if not, there are some speakers that have signed up and we can move <br />to that section. <br />Chair Brown asked if they were going to get a response from the staff on all the <br />questions brought forward by Duke Power. Craig Benedict said they would respond item <br />by item before they go to the Planning Board. <br />Commissioner Carey had a question about section 6.31.6H, regarding intrusiveness of <br />lighting. He wanted to knawwhat non-conforming meant regarding sliding scale. Craig <br />Benedict explained this. <br />Public Comment: <br />Mark Smith - OC Commission for the Environment. "Thank you for all the work you do <br />every day doing this commissioner stuff. It is scary for me to look at your schedules. So does <br />everyone have this in front of you? This is a presentation I prepared a while ago and gave to <br />the Commission for the Environment and then to some people on the Planning Board and I <br />guess originated the Ordinance you are seeing now and I am not going to go through the whole <br />thing, it takes a little longer than I think is reasonable given that you've got like four sessions <br />going for one. <br />"But there is a lot of information in here about what light pollution consists of, the amount <br />of waste, the environment impacts that are involved, security and safety issues, and a lot of <br />things that Craig already touched on. I am not going to go over all that again. I think just for <br />reference purposes, let's go ahead and flip to the pictures here, which Craig can put them up <br />there too, the good, the bad, and the ugly. <br />"I just want to give us all a {and I am going to apologize to everyone in the room here, <br />you are going to go home looking at light fixtures, driving down the road now and moaning <br />about bad lighting and good lighting, at least until we get this Ordinance implemented, not for <br />the rest of your natural life hopefully}. So the first 3 of these basically give you an idea of what <br />good basic lighting designs are. <br />"And the idea with this Ordinance, as I am looking at it, is to just have good fixtures put <br />in and it is a pretty simple matter; it is just an engineering, a technical fix. The idea is to have <br />the light shining down on the things that you want to light up and not in your eyes, not creating <br />glare and not creating safety and security concerns where you can't see what you are supposed <br />to be trying to look at. And the way this works is that the first 3 pictures are called full cut-off <br />fixtures. Basically they do not let the light go above the level of the fixture. And so for light <br />pollution purposes that keeps the light, except what is reflecting off the moisture in the air, below <br />the fixture off the pavement and keeps it from ending up in the sky and also saves you a whole <br />lot of light, saves you a lot of energy. And so you have regular street lights here, go back a <br />couple, and this is what you would want to put out in this parking lot instead of these acorns that <br />basically emit light almost 360 degrees and just spray it up in the air. <br />