The Eagle Rock Homeowners Association in Ivins was approached by Marc Deshowitz, one of it’s board members at the time, to initiate a light reduction pilot program for 30 days for 20 of it’s 92 homes.
The Eagle Rock community in Ivins
The lights that were being used in overhead garage lights were transitioning from 60 watt incandescent flood lamps to CFL floodlamps. This issue with both bulbs is that they protruded from the light fixture creating a lot of glare.
The new lighting proposed utilized a CFL or LED Bulb which would be recessed into the lighting fixture, eliminating side glare.
After 30 days, the Board and community
unanimously approved the new lighting and a team of residents replaced
everyone’s bulbs in the HOA. 92 homes
plus the clubhouse resulted in a retrofit of 195 lighting fixtures making this
HOA much more night sky friendly.
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.
Red Mountain Resort has been a supporter of our Initiative from the start and provides us with meeting rooms and audio visual equipment for our educational events.
Tracey Welsh, the Resort’s General Manager, recently commented about our Initiative, saying, “We’re pretty excited to be a part of this.” Excited enough that she has asked us to analyze their outdoor lighting to find out if it is as “night sky friendly” as they have always intended it to be.
Nathan Dupre, a member of our Technical Committee, has just finished design of a workbook with help from some committee members that will let us do this analysis for the Resort. We have taken a lot of photos, some spectrometer readings, and counted fixtures. The next step is to get some lighting specifications and do the analysis.
We will update this blog post when the analysis is completed.
Red Mountain Resort
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.
We made a presentation to the Board of the Copper Canyon Home Owners Association (HOA) on Monday. The presentation included a brief overview of our goals, activities to date, and lighting issues we are working on.
The Board expressed support for our Initiative and went further. They asked us to analyze their outdoor lighting to determine if the community is “night sky friendly” and make recommendations for modifications, if needed.
We will update this blog post when the analysis is completed.
The Copper Canyon community in Ivins has 72 homes
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.
This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video expands the discussion of health issues beyond light’s negative impact on us to its negative impacts on all of nature.
Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:
Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
The hidden danger in white light: Blue
More light doesn’t mean more safe
How light pollution increases air pollution
Wrong outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
Simple outdoor retrofit examples
What you can do to improve outdoor lighting
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 dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video shows how light pollution actually contributes to air pollution.
We will post another video excerpt from Marc’s presentation soon. Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:
Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
The hidden danger in white light: Blue
More light doesn’t mean more safe
How light pollution increases air pollution
Outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
Simple outdoor retrofit examples
What you can do to improve outdoor lighting
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 dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video dispels the commonly held belief that more light means more safety, not only through practical examples but also from actual research.
We will post another video excerpt from Marc’s presentation soon. Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:
Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
The hidden danger in white light: Blue
More light doesn’t mean more safe
How light pollution increases air pollutione
Outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
Simple outdoor retrofit examples
What you can do to improve outdoor lighting
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 dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video shows how simple and inexpensive it can be to retrofit existing outdoor lights to shield them and reduce, if not eliminate glare. And it shows the dramatic result of a city’s major retrofit.
We will post another video excerpt from Marc’s presentation soon. Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:
Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
The hidden danger in white light: Blue
More light doesn’t mean more safe
How light pollution increases air pollution
Wrong outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
Simple outdoor retrofit examples
What you can do to improve outdoor lighting
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 dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
The typical LED light emits a lot of blue light which is a health and safety concern. Ivins City is addressing those concerns by adding amber filters to new city-owned outdoor street lights.
Even though the new lights have LEDs with a color temperature of 3000K, which still emits a lot of blue light, our spectrometer readings shown in the graphs below found the filter eliminated almost all of the blue light. Wilson Jimenez, a City employee, came up with the idea for the amber filters and also designed and fabricated them.
In addition, the City is working with members of our Initiative to improve the city’s current outdoor lighting ordinance. Recently, we gave the City Council a series of recommendations which they have sent to their Technical Review Committee to study. From there, the recommendations will go to through the public hearing process.
In addition to adding filters to new City lights, the Mayor supports the mission of the Ivins Night Sky Initiative. Here are some comments he made at an event we sponsored recently.
And the City displays information about the Initiative and brochures about outdoor lighting issues, concerns, and opportunities.
Outdoor lighting brochures available to the public at City Hall.
This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video discusses the major problem the typical LED light has, it emits too much blue light which is both a health and safety hazard.
We will post another excerpt from Marc’s presentation soon. Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:
Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
The hidden danger in white light: Blue
How light pollution increases air pollutione
Outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
Bright white light doesn’t increase safety
Simple outdoor retrofit examples
What you can do to improve outdoor lighting
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 dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
Two art galleries approached us at our information table during last weekend’s Kayenta Street Painting Festival offering to help get the word out by displaying our brochures about outdoor lighting health and safety issues in their galleries. They are Datura Gallery and Gallery 873.
Tim Povlick and Lois Diehl at our information table during the Kayenta Street Painting Festival
Red Mountain Resort was already supporting our efforts with free meeting space, but the offer by the galleries got us thinking: Shouldn’t we be asking businesses in Ivins to help get our message out?
Events Committee members Lois Diehl and Tim Povlick got things started by printing out some posters and approaching businesses. In the past week alone, they along with Events Committee members Chris Haddad, Sally Tom, and board members Kai Reed and Sue Gordhammer approached other businesses that were glad to help. They are either displaying brochures and/or posters now, or will as soon as we get them printed and delivered.
Here are businesses that have agreed to help get our message out:
Aragosta Restaurant
Datura Gallery
IBB Cyclery & Multisport
Ice Box & Roundabout Grill
Ivins Barber Shop
Gallery 873
Kayenta Homes & Properties
Lightfoot’s Market
Mystic Canyon Light Gallery
Red Mountain Market
Sacred Space Spa
Troy’s Custom Body & Paint
Tuacahn Center for the Performing Arts
Xetava Gardens Cafe
Zia Pottery Studio
Red Mountain Resort supports our mission by providing us with conference space and audio visual equipment for events. Even the Santa Clara Library is helping by displaying a poster about our Initiative. Plus, the lobby at Ivins City Hall displays a poster about the Initiative’s work and mission along with information brochures.
If you don’t see an Ivins business listed here, it’s probably only because we haven’t asked them yet. The positive response has been overwhelming.
If you have a business in Ivins, or know someone who does, let us know if you are willing to help by displaying a poster about our Initiative and/or brochures about outdoor lighting and lighting issues, and endorsement cards.
Or, if you have a business in Ivins but you don’t have clients coming to your premises, displaying a poster or brochures isn’t practical. In that case, we would appreciate if you could let us know that you support our mission.
And, if you would like to join a tremendous group of volunteers, just send us a note from the Contact us page.
An Ivins Night Sky Initiative presentation at Red Mountain Resort’s Conference Center by Marc Deshowitz, “Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky.”
Cherie Stoddard showing a display of our brochures at Gallery 873
Kirk and Charity Nelson, owners of IBB Cyclery & Multisport, support our mission. Shown here: Kirk Nelson.
Outdoor lighting brochures available to the public in the lobby of City Hall.
