Sedona set to vote on dark skies

Source: The Arizona Daily Sun, FlagstaffSept.儲存 08--After years of debate, the Sedona City Council will decide Tuesday whether to seek an official International Dark-Sky Association designation.If approved, the city would become just the fifth community in the world to win the illustrious designation.Flagstaff was the first such city."Sedona is a lot like Flagstaff," said Sedona Mayor Rob Adams. "We have a strong commitment to sustainability and the environment. We feel like, with the dark sky designation, we are making a statement about our city, as well as giving us some guidelines to move forward and maintaining or improving it."The designation would be good for business he says, but overall it's a quality of life issue. There are no astronomical observatories being jeopardized by the level of light pollution the city is putting out.The school district, fire department, chamber of commerce and board of supervisors have all moved to support the IDA application.SURPRISINGLY CONTENTIOUSBut the debate in Sedona has been surprisingly contentious, where some residents say that their city should be disqualified because of the recent installation of 100 35-foot-tall lights along Highway 89A.Mayor Adams is not one of those detractors, and now a Tucson group has the data to back him up.The Arizona Department of Transportation drew widespread criticism in Sedona when it announced plans to install the lights along the roadways it maintains inside city limits.Adams says that after one city council approved the lights and a subsequent city council came out against them, ADOT simply decided to go ahead anyway.The alternative offered by ADOT and others was to turn the stretch of road over to the city and allow them to manage it themselves. ADOT even offered Sedona a lump sum of cash to take it off their hands.The five-term mayor says the decision was simple for him. The costs of maintenance were far too high to be sustainable. Voters agreed and defeated a proposal to take over the road.After the vote, the city worked with ADOT to make sure that the lights would have as little impact as possible on the night sky. The lights now meet the minimum safety standards of ADOT and are compliant with the International Dark-Sky Association's guidelines."There was all this misinformation about how impactful the lights were going to be," he said.He says that a small group, which he referred to as "Sierra Club" type-people, called the IDA to complain about the lights, which threw the designation into jeopardy.NEGLIGIBLE IMPACT ON NIGHT SKYAs it turns out, though, the debate was moot, according to Eric Craine, a lighting expert.Fo新蒲崗迷你倉 three years, Craine has been working on developing new technology for looking at sky brightness and light at night in southern Arizona. The common way of measuring light pollution simply uses a static photometer, which doesn't provide any data about the source of the light.His group takes a comprehensive approach by flying over an area in a grid to survey the night sky above. They also drove along city streets with a mobile photometer that measured darkness at the zenith -- the darkest point in the sky -- as seen from the ground.They were already looking at Tucson and various wilderness areas in southern Arizona and New Mexico. Other than astronomy, another reason to be concerned with light pollution is its impact on wildlife.Craine says that in 2012, Christian Monrad, vice-president of the board of the International Dark-Sky Association and an engineer working on lighting the Rosemont Mine, wanted to learn more about studying the before and after effects of lighting projects.He suggested to Craine that the ADOT project in Sedona might be a good opportunity.Craine did extensive light measurements in Sedona before the project and then suggested that new tools be tested to estimate what impact the lights would have. Other astronomers disagreed. They thought it was so obvious the lights would not have an impact that it wouldn't be worth the effort.The scientists drove Highway 89A and its sidestreets for several blocks in west Sedona. They flew over the city in massive grids pointing equipment up and down. They also used a nearby control site to verify their results.The study showed that there was essentially no impact whatsoever. The only noticeable impact was that the streets had been lit for safety. Traveling just off Highway 89 was enough to remove the effect.MUCH WORSE IN TUCSONCraine says that the city and lights should be applauded as an example of lighting done right. And he adds that all the people crying foul about light pollution without a scientific basis are going to make it more difficult to fight projects that are actually a threat.He says that things are much worse down in Tucson, where despite the city's reputation as dark-sky friendly, studies have found that many sporting arenas have lights pointed at the sky.As for Sedona, if the Council gives the green light Tuesday, the city would apply to the International Dark-Sky Association sometime this fall.Eric Betz can be reached at 556-2250 or ebetz@azdailysun.com.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff, Ariz.) Visit The Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff, Ariz.) at .azdailysun.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesmini storage