By NATHAN WELTON
South Coast Beacon
Nathan Welton Photos

A t 4:31 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994, the earth near Los Angeles groaned as a fault beneath Northridge gave way to a 6.8-magnitude quake. The shaking toppled buildings, buckled freeways and even derailed trains, and the shockwaves rolled through the South Coast and continued north. Frightened Santa Barbarans who walked outside and peered toward the heavens that morning surely witnessed a rarity: a dark sky over town. Without the city’s lights, it looked as if someone had flipped on a switch powering the stars.

As urban development continues in Santa Barbara County, more and more residents are wishing they could dim the city glow and return darkness to the firmament, contending that doing so would reduce the burden on the strained electrical grid, save money, benefit the environment, and allow us to see the stars again. As such, this Saturday night, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, along with Santa Ynez Valley’s Women’s Environmental Watch, or WeWatch, and the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit, will be hosting a celebration of National Dark Sky Week to boost awareness of the growing problem of light pollution.

“People don’t think through what the impact on the sky and the environment will be when we put in lights,” said Barbara O’Grady, a WeWatch member who said she can see Bakersfield’s glow from her home in Santa Ynez Valley.

Excess light is known to cause sea turtle hatchlings to scurry toward glowing cities, confusing them for moonlight reflecting off oceans, and it’s known to cause birds to crash into objects and to interfere with their migratory habits. Scientists even suspect the border lights along the Rio Grande River may disturb the nocturnal habits of predators like the endangered ocelot.

But aside from the environmental impacts, “energy is a huge public policy issue for California and really for the nation, and every homeowner is recognizing the increase in electricity costs,” said O’Grady, adding that light pollution is a waste of money.

Crippling energy costs aren’t just a California concern: the Canadian city of Calgary is currently retrofitting about 50,000 inefficient street lamps in residential neighborhoods with better fixtures that will direct the light downward instead of outward. These so-called full-cutoff fixtures will allow officials to install lower-wattage bulbs and still retain the same amount of street illumination. Although engineers have estimated the project’s cost at nearly $8 million, taxpayers will reap a $2 million a year savings on energy.

“Hopefully, the city of Santa Barbara will join Calgary,” said Carol Herrera, president of WeWatch, explaining that her group has been discussing writing an ordinance with county planners for the Santa Ynez Valley that would require new buildings and renovations to use full-cutoff lights.

“Dark skies are amazing — they don’t bother anybody because everyone likes to see the stars.”

According to local light designer Norman Russell, fixing the problem of light pollution is technically simple, although it does require some up-front costs. He explained that homeowners simply need to use different lighting fixtures and be cognizant of where the light from their houses winds up.

“The previous owner of my house had a big floodlight that shined into my backyard and into my neighbor’s backyard,” said Craig Prater of the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit. The flooding of light into his neighbor’s space is known as light trespass, which he solved by installing a cutoff fixture and installing several solar powered knee-high lights in his backyard.

Russell estimated cutoff fixtures generally cost about 15 percent to 30 percent more than standard fixtures, but the expense is offset over the long term because, like the Canadian street lamps, the fixtures allow consumers to install lower-wattage bulbs that use less electricity. But home improvement centers generally don’t stock as many full-cutoff fixtures as regular fixtures, said Russell, because there previously hadn’t been a consumer demand and designers hadn’t really considered mitigating light pollution.

Instead, the bigger obstacle may be simply alerting and educating the public on how to reduce light pollution and save money by doing so.

“However cavalier we are about how we use our energy in this country, we hurt ourselves daily if we don’t think about ways to conserve it,” said Russell. “We all live on the same power grid, and we have less of an impact on it and on the environment if we don’t waste energy.”