Streetlighting Concerns

I submitted the following letter to the editor to the Dodgeville Chronicle this evening:

Dear Editor:

Have you noticed the gradual transformation of our streetlights in Dodgeville, Mineral Point, and other communities in SW Wisconsin?  The light source in our streetlights is changing.  High Pressure Sodium (HPS), which has been in use for decades and produces a orangish-white light, is being replaced by light emitting diodes (LEDs), producing a whiter light.

What’s not to like?  LED’s many advantages include: efficiency, longevity, instant-on and instant-off, and dimmability, to name a few.  But Alliant Energy is installing new streetlights that produce white light that is too blue, and the illumination levels are about 2.6 times as bright as the high pressure sodium streetlights they are replacing.

Lighting specialists use a term called “correlated color temperature” or CCT (in Kelvin) that allows us to compare the relative “warmness” (redder) or “coolness” (bluer) of  various light sources.   The illumination provided by candlelight has a CCT around 1500 K, HPS around 2000 K, an incandescent light bulb around 2800 K, sunrise/sunset around 3200 K, moonlight around 4700 K, and sunny noon daylight around 5500 K.  The higher the color temperature, the bluer the light.

Higher color temperature illumination is acceptable in workplace environments during the daylight hours, but lower color temperature lighting should be used during the evening and at night.  Blue-rich light at night interferes with our circadian rhythm by suppressing melatonin production, thus reducing sleep quality, and several medical studies have shown that blue light at night increases the risk of developing cancer, most notably breast cancer.  Even low levels of blue-rich light at night can cause harm.  While it is true that something as natural as moonlight is quite blue (4700K), even the light of a full moon provides an illumination level of just 0.01 foot-candle, far dimmer than street lighting, parking lot lighting, and indoor lighting we use at night.

LED streetlights are available in 2700K, 3000K, 4000K, and 5000K.  I believe that Alliant is installing 4000K streetlights in our area—I certainly hope they are not installing any 5000K.  What they should be installing is 2700K or 3000K.  These warmer color temperature lights are no more expensive than their blue-white counterparts, and the slightly higher efficiency of the blue-white LEDs is entirely nullified by over-illumination.

Even considering a modest lowering of light level with age (lumen and dirt depreciation), these new LED streetlights are considerably brighter than the HPS lights they are replacing.  Just take a look around town.  What is the justification for higher light levels in our residential areas, and when was there an opportunity for public input?  In comparison to older streetlights, the new LED streetlights direct more of their light toward the ground and less sideways or directly up into the night sky, and that is a good thing.  But now the illumination level is too high and needs to be reduced a little.

If you share my concerns about blue-rich lighting and illumination levels that are often higher than they need to be, I encourage you to contact me at oesper at mac dot com.  I operated an outdoor lighting sales & consulting business out of my home (Outdoor Lighting Associates, Inc.) from 1994-2005, and wrote the first draft of the Ames, Iowa Outdoor Lighting Code which was unanimously adopted by the city council in 1999, so I am eager to work with others in the Dodgeville area who are also interested in environmentally-friendly outdoor lighting.

David Oesper
Dodgeville

Dodgeville Streetlights

Has anyone else noticed how Alliant Energy is gradually replacing our orangish-white-light streetlights with bluish-white-light ones? The orangish-white-light streetlights are high-pressure sodium (HPS) with a correlated color temperature (CCT) of 1900K, whereas the bluish-white-light streetlights that are replacing them are LED with a CCT of 4000K, and, most notably, they are two and a half times as bright.

Even though I have written to both Alliant Energy and the City of Dodgeville, nothing has changed.

My questions, which are still unanswered:

What is the justification for increasing the streetlighting illumination level by two and a half times over what it has been for decades?

Why are we going from 1900K to 4000K (cold white), when 2700K or 3000K (warm white) is readily available and being used in many communities in the U.S. and Canada?

This same transformation is happening in Mineral Point, and probably many other communities in SW Wisconsin as well.

Is anyone else noticing how this is profoundly changing the rural character of our nighttime environment? Is anyone else concerned about this? The increase in glare and light trespass onto neighboring properties from these new LED lights is quite noticeable to me, even though they are nominally full-cutoff. Why? They are too bright, and too blue.

If anyone locally is reading Cosmic Reflections (and sometimes I wonder if anyone is…), and if you have noticed and are alarmed by these streetlighting changes, please contact me on blog or off blog (oesper at mac.com) and let’s meet and discuss a plan of action. Something needs to be done before it is too late and we are stuck with this very negative change to our nighttime environment.

Stevens Point

I visited Stevens Point, Wisconsin for the first time over the Memorial Day weekend and, I have to say, this community of 26,000 is impressive. A great place to stay while you’re there is the Baymont Inn & Suites at 247 Division St. N. It is a short and pleasant walk to the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point campus, the Schmeeckle Reserve (wow!), and the Green Circle Trail. Michele’s Restaurant is only a few blocks down the street. Great food!

I miss living in a college town. It is energizing to interact on a daily basis with well educated, intellectually curious, and cosmopolitan people who are passionate about their work. I lived in Ames, Iowa—where Iowa State University is located—for nearly 30 years, and I feel more at home in Stevens Point, a smaller community, than I do now in Ames. I think Stevens Point is the nicest community I have visited since leaving Ames in 2005. Definitely would be willing to live there someday. UW-Stevens Point even has a physics & astronomy department, an observatory, and a planetarium. Perhaps I could help out in retirement.

Some towns have a lot going for them even without a college or university—around here, Mineral Point and Spring Green come to mind. Some towns are at somewhat of a disadvantage because they have a name that is not particularly attractive. For example, Dodgeville, where I currently live and work, has a moniker that isn’t all that inviting. But there is no place so nice to live as a college town—for people like me, at least.

My primary civic interests are in gradually developing a well planned network of paved, off-road bike paths, walking trails through natural areas, a center for continuing education, a community astronomical observatory, and a comprehensive and well-enforced outdoor lighting ordinance to restore, preserve, and protect our nighttime environment and view of the night sky. Living in a community like Dodgeville, I don’t get the sense that there is enough interest or political will to make any of these things happen. I can’t do it alone.

Bike Path to Nowhere

The Dodgeville area is badly in need of an off-road paved (asphalt) bike path.  Every time I go to Madison, I am envious of all the bike trails they have.  Why can’t small towns like Dodgeville and rural areas have some paved bike paths, too?  Brigham County Park in rural Dane County has a beautiful new trail.  Why not Iowa County?

I’d really like to see the Military Ridge Trail between Dodgeville and Ridgeway paved.  Anyone interested in serving on an ad hoc committee with me to make that happen?

There is a 5.1-mile paved trail called the Shake Rag Trail which runs along US Highway 151 between Dodgeville and Mineral Point, but it is far from ideal.  First of all, there is no safe way to bike to it from Dodgeville!  You can ride through the hospital parking lot to Heritage Lane, head south until you get to Brennan Rd., turn right, but when you get to WI Highway 23, you have to ride along the east shoulder of that busy road with fast-moving vehicles for 0.4 miles to get to the bike path, as shown in the map below.

What a relief!  You’ve now reached the paved bike path, and it is off-road!

But, after traveling only 0.5 mile, the bike path suddenly ends at Chris-Na-Mar Road.

You now ride 0.7 miles on Chris-Na-Mar Road, and then the off-road bike path starts up again.

Now, you get to ride 1.3 miles on an off-road paved bike path.  Yay!  But the bike path again abruptly ends at County Road YD.  It is not clear what you should do next except maybe turn around?

Persistence pays off, and if you soldier on you’ll find that you can ride 2.1 miles on County Road YD until you reach the off-road bike path again.  You’re almost to Mineral Point!

The bike path goes another 0.5 mile until it ends at Shakerag St. in Mineral Point.  You’ve traveled a total of 5.1 miles on the Shake Rag Trail, but less than half of it was on a bona fide bike path.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad that the Shake Rag Trail got built.  But for any of you who have ridden the crushed rock Military Ridge Trail between Dodgeville and Ridgeway (all off-road), you’ll understand how much nicer Military Ridge Trail would be than the Shake Rag Trail if only it were paved.

March for Our Lives

I am so very proud of what hundreds of thousands of Americans of all ages did today, marching in hundreds of anti-gun-violence rallies all across our nation.  I’m especially proud of the students.  We had a huge group of marchers in Mineral Point, Wisconsin (students included), and I was glad I participated.

I do not want to live in a country where everyone is armed to the teeth.  You know, you have to decide what kind of a world you want to live in and then work towards that goal, no matter how difficult.

Paul McCartney at a March for Our Lives event in New York City

I was devastated and angry when John Lennon was shot to death in New York in 1980 outside his apartment building by a very disturbed man (it is almost always a man, isn’t it?).  I mean, who the hell would kill a musician?  I will never get over it On that day (and many times since), I decided “enough is enough”.  Gun ownership should be a privilege that has to be earned, not a right.  And weapons of war do not belong in the hands of private citizens—ever.  If that involves repealing the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, then so be it.  But “we the people” never get a chance to vote on gun issues, do we?

If gun owners in this country can’t support much stricter and sensible gun laws, then maybe we should peacefully go our separate ways.  Gun lovers can have their country (a dystopia, really), and the rest of us can live somewhere else.  I would support a civil separation, but never a civil war.  (Besides, we know which side has most of the guns.)

“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.”

– Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)