Jack Scully, a member of our Technical Committee, and Wilson Jimenez, a city employee and co-owner of Arrow Four Services LLC and one of our advisors, took charge of installing the eight anti-glare shields and blue light filters late last week for our demonstration project at Rocky Vista University.
We just installed anti-glare shields and blue light filters on 8 parking lot lights at Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine.
This demonstration project is a study the University is conducting, sponsored by the Ivins Night Sky Initiative, to see if the shields and filters can be effectively retrofitted into existing lighting to reduce glare and blue light emissions while meeting the university’s need to provide nighttime safety for their students.
Glare
The City has long required outdoor lighting to be fully shielded, meaning light fixtures can’t aim light up into the sky. But even fully shielded fixtures send light out horizontally as well as down. That not only wastes light by sending it where it isn’t needed, it creates a glare problem.
Our technical Committee came up with a way to reduce glare significantly while still providing adequate lighting where it’s needed; on the ground.
Blue light
LED lighting is quickly replacing High Pressure Sodium lights and other older technologies because LEDs are so much more energy efficient. You can easily spot the difference. The older technologies produce a softer, warmer, more comfortable light compared to the bright white light from LEDs. That’s because LEDs emit a lot of blue light while the older technologies emit very little, if any blue light.
Blue light rays have short wavelengths just above ultraviolet light. We’ve known for a long time that ultraviolet light can be harmful. It can burn. That’s why we wear sunscreen. We’re learning that too much blue light can also be harmful.
Blue light filters
Ivins City has found a way to use LED technology but take out most of the blue light. That eliminates the added health and safety risks from LEDs compared to older technologies and results in a warmer, more pleasing light.
The University’s study will help others determine the feasibility of retrofitting their own lighting to reduce blue light and glare. It will also help the city in its efforts to get designated as a Dark Sky Community by the International Dark Sky Association.
The Ivins City Council took groundbreaking action this evening on what we believe to be the lead nationally in dramatically improving nighttime health and safety for Ivins residents with changes to its outdoor lighting ordinance.
The city now requires that the maximum color temperature for all new outdoor non-residential lighting is 3,000 degrees Kelvin, down from 4,000. But more importantly, these new lights will be required to add amber filters the city designed that effectively reduces the color temperature to about 2,200 degrees Kelvin, eliminating almost all the blue light emitted by LEDs that creates safety and health problems. Outdoor lighting for new residential development will be limited to no more than 2,700 degrees Kelvin.
Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine (RVUCOM) is going even further.
The city’s new requirements only affect new construction, but RVUCOM has begun a study sponsored by the Ivins Night Sky Initiative to see if these new requirements can be effectively retrofitted into existing lighting while continuing to meet the university’s need to provide nighttime safety for their students. The study will also look for a solution to another problem magnified by LEDs: unwanted glare.
The City has long required outdoor lighting to be fully shielded, meaning light fixtures can’t aim light up into the sky. But even fully shielded fixtures send light out horizontally as well as down. That not only wastes light by sending it where it isn’t needed, it creates a glare problem.
RVUCOM’s study will help others determine the feasibility of retrofitting their own lighting to reduce blue light and glare. It will also help the city in its efforts to get designated as a Dark Sky Community by the International Dark Sky Association.
What’s the big deal?
LED lighting is quickly replacing High Pressure Sodium lights and other older technologies because LEDs are so much more energy efficient. You can easily spot the difference. The older technologies produce a softer, warmer, more comfortable light compared to the bright white light from LEDs. That’s because LEDs emit a lot of blue light while the older technologies emit very little, if any blue light.
Blue light rays have short wavelengths just above ultraviolet light. We’ve known for a long time that ultraviolet light can be harmful. It can burn. That’s why we wear sunscreen. We’re learning that too much blue light can also be harmful.
How does the Ivins solution work?
Ivins City has found a way to use LED technology but take out most of the blue light. That eliminates the added health and safety risks from LEDs compared to older technologies and results in a warmer, more pleasing light.
For more information about the progress of this study, blue light health and safety issues, or other information about outdoor lighting, contact us or visit their website at IvinsNightSky.org. The Ivins Night Sky Initiative is a 100% volunteer, not for profit, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, citizen organization. Also visit the International Dark Sky Association’s website at www.darksky.org. For more information regarding Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine please visit the website at http://www.rvu.edu/.
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Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins.
Just because we have submitted recommendations for changes to the city’s Outdoor Lighting Ordinance doesn’t mean we’re done. Far from it. Seriously, far from it! We can really use your talent and energy to make our Initiative’s vision and goals a reality.
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Reading an interesting book at bedtime is a time honored method of falling asleep. With the advent of LED reading lights a problem has cropped up due to the blue light content of LED’s, which reduces the feeling of sleepiness. This is a relatively new problem, because the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs we grew up with emit much less blue light.
Recent research shows the blue light that is prevalent in LEDs disrupts the sleep cycle. Blue light leads to a reduction in the production of melatonin, an important hormone for restful sleep. For more information about LEDs and blue light, see our video article, The hidden danger of white light: Blue.
Reading before going to sleep is restful but the LED light I’m using is disruptive. So what can I do? Glad you asked. A couple of members of our Ivins Night Sky Initiative have a solution. Tim Povlick and Lois Diehl added a simple filter to their reading lights, cutting out almost all of the blue light. More about the filter later.
In this example the LED based reading light had a CCT of approximately 4000K. The device uses 3 AAA batteries and the light resembles a miniature Cobra street light. Here’s what the light looks like before adding the filter and after.
Note: Don’t wrap the filter over lights that get hot
This image shows the lamp illuminating a text book. Note the white color of the light indicating a large percentage of blue light.
To reduce the blue light a blue blocking filter was used. The material is soft plastic and has an orange color. The filter is cut to size using scissors and taped to the LED.
Light from the reading lamp now has a soft warm cast and does not interfere with easily falling asleep. This image shows the effects of the filter.
Reading is more relaxing and the slight color cast doesn’t interfere with reading the text. Oh, and if you don’t like the color cast shown in the example above, just try different filter colors. The ones to test range from a light yellow to an amber. Lighter colors mean you will get more blue light, but any reduction in blue is an improvement.
What do I get and where to buy it?
You can get the filters from Adorama (Lee filters UV Blue Blocker). A 24′ x 24″ gel sheet costs $8.69 and is big enough to cover a few lights.
The City is doing it too
The City is doing the same thing on new streetlights. Here’s how the color spectrum changes with the addition of an amber filter. The blue light almost disappears.
Join us
Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
Ivins has had a plan in place since 2007 to add new streetlights as the city grew. The map below shows where the lights would be installed over time.
Editor’s note: Please add your comments about our post at the bottom of this article.
Recently, the City Council has been discussing streetlights. The focus of the discussion has been on the type of lights, pole heights, and color temperatures. But the discussions have also made residents aware of the number of new streetlights the city plans to install over the next 5, 10, or 20 years.
It appears that a lot of residents think this is a new direction for the city. Well, it may be new information for them but the city has had this plan for a dozen years.
Some residents want more light. Others want less. Our view is that lighting is important, but we should take time to determine how much lighting, where it is really needed, and what type of lighting is appropriate. So we’ve started to do a little research to see what other cities are doing.
How many street lights do you need?
Fountain Hills Arizona had a population of 24,583 people in 2017. That’s a lot more than the 2019 estimate for Ivins of 9,315. But it is close to what the ultimate build-out of Ivins is projected at. So it is a good comparison to our city’s 2007 plan because that plan is based on build-out at some point in the future.
Fountain Hills is designated as a Dark Sky Community from the International Dark Sky Association. That’s something we are working towards as well.
We took a street tour of the Fountain Hills, using Google Street View. Then we verified our count with the Fountain Hills Public Works Department. There are 62 streetlights in the city located at fifteen intersections. Fourteen of those are busy intersections in predominantly commercial zones with stop lights as well as streetlights.
Based on the city’s 2017 population, that amounts to one streetlight for every 396 residents.
This count does not include bollard lights the city installed on the walkway around the lake in Fountain Park or city lights on a two block outdoor commercial mall.
A Google Earth view of Fountain Hills shows that it has significant commercial development. The streetlights are concentrated in the commercial areas.
How does Ivins compare?
Our survey of Ivins streetlights earlier this year, conducted by driving every street in the city, found 151 streetlights. That excludes bollards (those low pathway lights). There are a few more today.
Based on a 2019 population estimate of 9,315 people in Ivins (from the data in the General Plan), there is one streetlight for every 62 residents.
On a per capita basis, Ivins has 6.4 times more streetlights than Fountain Hills Arizona.
Are they happy?
The following comments are from Marissa Moore, AICP, the Senior Planner for Fountain Hills: “We do have very few streetlights. This was a decision made by the town founders. From what I’ve been told it was two-fold: money, and the residents and original developers wanted to maintain the natural environment since that is a huge factor in the attraction to the town. I have not heard of any proposed installation of lights in the future.”
Mark and Mona Bilden are Fountain Hills residents. Here’s what they think about the lack of streetlights in their city: “We love our dark community and don’t miss street lights at all. We do not feel any concerns about safety. If people want to walk at night they can go to the Fountain and the walking path all around is lit with lights that are short and low to see the sidewalk. It is so wonderful to see all the stars at night!”
They bring up a good point though. Bollards have their place. Fountain Hills has very few sidewalks. Ivins makes a point on connecting neighborhoods with walkways, and lighting them with bollards. We measured the lighting pattern of these bollards last week and found they provide quite a bit of street lighting too.
But what about safety?
We asked her about safety. Marissa said, “As far as safety concerns, I’ve not heard too many. There is a learning curve about what the lighting requirements are, and most find that they are not as restrictive as it may seem. And some people actually want them MORE restrictive.”
Conclusion
Fountain Hills is one example. We just started looking at this issue and found a few more communities with few streetlights, but they were smaller than Ivins today and much smaller than Ivins is projected to be at build-out. But we’ll keep looking, so let us know about cities you are familiar with that have few streetlights.
The Fountain Hills research not only showed us it’s possible to have few streetlights and not impact safety negatively, it also suggests streetlights are more appropriate in dense commercial areas, not residential. that’s clear in the map above. Ivins will see more commercial development, but there’s not much likelihood the city will have any sense commercial area.
Join us
Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
At the last City Council meeting an Ivins resident and astronomer, Ron Levandosky, spoke to the City Council about a problem he was having with a new streetlight. He asked if there could be another solution that would help him and still satisfy the City’s concerns about safety.
The Mayor, Chris Hart, expressed an interest in looking into Ron’s problem. Chuck Gillette, the City’s Public Works Director told the Mayor that he had already scheduled a nighttime spectrometer analysis of some streetlights with the Ivins Night Sky Initiative that included the streetlight in question.
So we took our new spectrometer out on Wednesday night with Chuck. It was the perfect night for taking measurements: no moon and no clouds. So, if you were out at midnight on Wednesday and saw two grown men sitting in the middle of the street with a tape measure, gadgets, and clipboards, that was us.
Our first stop that night was Ron’s “Cassiopeia Observatory” next to his home which he uses for astrophotography. Ron explained the problem he was having and Chuck asked about the impacts some potential solutions or work-arounds might have. Although there was no “instant” solution that night, it was a good start.
And this issue helped underscore why the spectrometer study we had planned for that night was important. Our goal was to look at how good of a job the City’s new streetlights and bollards did in providing sufficient light on the ground without creating undo glare and light trespass.
And we wanted to isolate the light pattern for bollards. The city is using these to light sidewalks. But they do provide road illumination. Our spectrometer study will tell us how well they illuminate streets in addition to sidewalks. That will help the City determine whether or not bollards could substitute for streetlights in some locations.
Chuck created a model showing the lighting pattern, or photometrics, for these lights a couple of weeks earlier. The model was based on manufacturer specifications, which is okay.
But we wanted to take “real world” measurements. That’s why we wound up sitting in the middle of the street at midnight. It will take a few weeks to process the results because of other projects and vacations getting in the way. But we’ll post the results once we have them. And we will provide updates of Ron’s situation as we learn more.
But we wanted to take “real world” measurements. That’s why we wound up sitting in the middle of the street at midnight.
It will take a few weeks to process the results because of other projects and vacations getting in the way. But we’ll post the results once we have them. And we will provide updates of Ron’s situation as we learn more.
Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
An Ivins resident contacted us in February asking for help solving a light trespass problem he has that is caused by a City cobra streetlight like the one shown here. The light is on all night and is located right outside his bedroom window.
We contacted the City and suggested additional shielding to stop the light trespass onto the resident’s property, like what the Santa Clara Harmons did on some of its parking lot lights that were affecting neighboring homes. Here’s a photo of one of the shielded lights.
Alternately, we suggested removing the light completely or turning it off. It is located mid-block, not at an intersection, and the Ivins streetlighting ordinance does not require mid-block streetlights unless there is a crosswalk. There is no crosswalk, and none planned. The utility company charges the City for removals, so there’s a budget issue.
The City’s Public Works Director agreed that the City’s mid-block streetlights are unnecessary and developed a plan to remove them. He did not like the idea of turning off the streetlight because then people call the city to let him know a light is burned out.
Also, we did our own research and were told by Dave Imlay, the Director of Hurricane Power, that he believes a city does not have liability concerns if there is no light but does have liability concerns if there is a light, but it is not working. That left shielding or removal as the only options.
At the beginning of June, the City had the cobra streetlight removed, solving the resident’s light trespass problem and reducing (admittedly minimally) the lumen output of the city.
We conducted our third comprehensive night sky survey in Ivins on July 1st at nine locations. These surveys compare the quality of our night sky at various locations. More importantly, the surveys will track the health of the night sky over time.
This survey found darker skies at all locations. We don’t have a long enough time-series to explain this change. However, anecdotally, this survey was conducted later at night and we noticed some commercial parking lot lights were turned off this time. That was not the case in the past two surveys. And most home windows were dark because of the late hour. We suspect that is the reason for the better sky quality readings.
Is it improving or deteriorating? General population growth will likely cause it to deteriorate. But implementing better lighting practices, putting light where it is needed for us on the ground rather than spreading it skyward, can slow or even reverse that deterioration.
The readings shown in the table and graph below are averages from our December, March, and July surveys of the brightness of the sky in units commonly accepted by the astronomical community (magnitudes per arc second).
The chart shows the averages for nine locations in Ivins. Lower numbers mean a brighter sky, and the scale is logarithmic where 1 step (eg. 19 to 20) represents a brightness difference of 2.5 times.
That means the night sky above the Southern Utah Veterans Home (site 9) is more than twice as bight as the sky above the northwest area of Kayenta (site 7).
As you would expect, there is considerable variation in the darkness of the night sky across Ivins. The differences are due only to artificial lighting and not to any circumstances beyond our control. Yes, we are impacted by our neighbors, particularly St. George and Santa Clara. But this survey shows that a lot of the brightness in our night sky is generated right here in Ivins.
The 20.6 average for Ivins indicates we can see about 3,000 stars with the naked eye. If readings drop to 19, we would only be able to see about 800 stars, at most. If it drops to 18, a common reading in many cities, we would only see about 400 stars. That could happen to us.
A growing population in Ivins and surrounding communities will push us in that direction. And adding poorly designed outdoor lighting will get us there faster. That takes a lot of awe and wonderment out of the sky, not much of a legacy to leave for future generations. On the flip side, if we could improve outdoor lighting, we might bring back some of the darker skies we used to have. Or at least protect what we have now. Don’t we owe that to our children, grandchildren, and future generations?
What if we could improve the quality of our night sky? A reading of 21.5 means we would be able to see more than 5,000 stars with the naked eye. Look up on the next clear night and try to imagine seeing those many stars instead of what we can see now, or the 400 we might be leaving our children with.
Fortunately, there are solutions. We discuss those in our Position Paper (see the sidebar link above). And we’re doing more than talking about solutions. We’re working on them. Look at the “Activities” menu for current projects we are working on.
If you would like to get involved in this or any other projects, let us know. Send us an email from the Contact us page.
Technical notes: We made measurements using the SQM-L Sky Quality Meter by Unihedron. This is a narrow cone, sensitive low-level light meter recommended by the International Dark Sky Association. It is Model No. _2.18, Serial No. 7914. We followed approved methodology, taking three readings at each site and averaged the results.
Our Technical Committee isn’t letting summer get in the way of having fun in shop working on projects. Last month the Committee started working on ideas for incorporating shielding and filters in existing lighting fixtures.
In the past couple of weeks they have started to turn their ideas into reality, buying a contemporary outdoor lighting fixture to dissect and test their ideas.
Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
Jack, an Ivins resident attended a presentation by the Ivins Night Sky Initiative at Red Mountain Resort in April and was energized by what he learned about the problems created by unnecessary light pollution.
Artificial light at night not only impairs our view of the night sky, it adversely affects our environment, our safety, energy consumption, and our health.
So, Jack went home and modified his outdoor sconces on his house.
The wall sconces on the outside of his house, like so many others, aimed light both up and down. When he built the home there wasn’t an uplighting restriction for this type of lighting.
They did not shine light out horizontally, so they did not affect the neighbors, but the uplighting created unnecessary skyglow.
Jack’s simple solution was to put a Dixie cup inside the sconce on top of the light source, blocking the uplighting completely. Problem solved. So now there’s an alternate story to explain why this area is called “Dixie.”
But wait, there’s more. Now all the light was directed down with none of it wasted. Plus, the white interior of the Dixie cup made the downlighting even brighter… too bright.
So, Jack replaced the 40-watt equivalent LEDs with 25-watt equivalent LEDs in all his sconces. That reduced his lumen output by almost 40%. Granted, these sconces don’t consume a lot of energy. This change saves Jack about $30 to $40 a year. It’s not a lot, but every bit helps.
If you have you made changes to your own outdoor lighting to make it more “night sky friendly” we would like to know about it. Send us your story.
Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
