This is a summary of research conducted in January By Ivins resident Kathy Barth based on FBI and Utah BCI statistics, which was a recommendation by Police Captain Rogers. The data source combines Ivins and Santa Clara. St George data is presented for comparison (see note at bottom).
The Planning Commission appears to assume that more lighting and whiter lighting (higher color temperatures) reduces crime and increases safety. Based on that assumption, St George should have lower per capita crime rates because they likely have more lighting and certainly have higher color temperature lighting than the Ivins streetlights and bollards.
That is not the case. Santa Clara/Ivins has significantly less crime, even adjusting for population. The statistics do not support the assumption that more and/or whiter lighting increases safety.
Captain Rogers ran a report of the times of calls. It groups “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” calls with “I’ve just been robbed” calls and “My home/equipment have been damaged” calls. Crime data alone wasn’t available.
The graph shows twice as many incidents during daylight compared to after dark. This also does not support the assumption that more and/or whiter lighting increases safety.
What’s the real issue?
Recent public comments expressed a desire for more lighting, so Kathy drove around the city. Some city streets appear to have fewer streetlights than others. So, the real issue may not be as simple as just more and whiter, but where.
A review of street lighting placement in the city would determine if there are areas where more streetlights and/or bollards may be appropriate and desired by the residents in those locations.
Notes: Additional information available: Data by type of crime; Incidents by hour and by day of week.Captain Rogers said it would take months to gather/collate that data for Ivins only.
The following comments were sent to the Ivins Planning Commission by Jennifer Burch, an Ivins resident, addressing her concerns about proposed changes to the city’s Outdoor Lighting Ordinance.
I object to any changes to the Ivins lighting ordinance until there are facts that warrant a discussion, and tests are completed and studied to prove community impact and confirm alignment with the Ivins General Plan.
The response received in support of changing the lighting ordinance contains anecdotal information, creating a problem that does not exist.
If public safely, due to our current lighting ordinance in Ivins were a true concern, the police would be involved in the discussion. There is no correlation between safety in our town and our current lighting ordinance until the Ivins police say that there is.
Local tests have been done, including the lighting tests at the college that has been in place for more than a year. What are the results of these tests?
If the lighting ordinance needs to be updated to include new technology, tests need to be done to ensure that any changes do not conflict with the Ivins General Plan.
I do not know what Planning Commissioner Bob Morris’ motivations are. However, if he were truly concerned about community safety and updating the plan to reference new technologies, he would have gained the support of the police, recommended tests, and be referencing specific data to support his claims.
On a personal note, any city official stating that voices of any number of townspeople is insignificant is bullying and a misuse of the officials position. (Editor’s note: That’s what Commissioner Morris said at the last meeting about emails expressing concerns from 39 Ivins residents.)
Do not take this lightly. You are considering that your group recommend the the approval of an ordinance that is in direct conflict with the Ivins General Plan, our city logo/signs and the uniqueness of our precious town.
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 Ivins City Council gets an overview of the recommendations for changes to the city’s Outdoor Lighting Ordinance from Mike Scott with the Ivins Night Sky Initiative.
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.
Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Ivins campus.
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.
The blue part of the light spectrum is
responsible for creating most of the glare we see. Glare constricts your
pupils, diminishing your eyes’ ability to adapt to low-light conditions, like
nighttime.
Scientists are just beginning to understand the
negative impacts on health, including blue light’s contribution to
cardiovascular disease, sleep, metabolic and immunological disorders, obesity,
cancer, macular degeneration, glaucoma, and more.
And blue light is disruptive to plants, animals,
crop pollination, and on and on.
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.
Wilson Jimenez, the Ivins City employee who came up with the filter, finishes installing the prototype anti-glare shield on a light fixture for Rocky Vista University along with the three anti-blue spectrum filters.
Alan Koharcheck and Tim Povlick, members of the Ivins Night Sky Initiative, in the City’s shop with Wilson Jimenez making a final check of the prototype before unveiling it to the University.Ivins Mayor Chris Hart shows the finished prototype to Kristine Jenkins , Rocky Vista University’s Director of Campus Operations and Terry Meyer, Manager of Public Safety and Security. Tim Povlick, a member of the Ivins Night Sky Initiative’s Technical Committee, tests the finished prottype anti-glare shield.
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/.
Add your comments
Please post your comments using the form at the bottom of this article. We would like to get your views about this article and about our Initiative.
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.
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.
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.
All of the colored dots represent existing and new streetlights that will be installed as development occurs around those locations.
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.
The map above shows streetlights in Fountain Hills are used primarily in busy commercial areas and not used in residential areas.
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.
Chuck Gillette, the Ivins City Public Works Director (left) and Ivins resident and astronomer Ron Levandosky (right) look out from Ron’s observatory at the streetlights.
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.
Here is one page of Chuck’s model, showing likely light patterns for two streetlights (the NW and SE corners of the intersection) and bollards.
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.
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.
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.
