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Bar Harbor Pulls Plug on Light Pollution

November 26, 2008 - BAR HARBOR -- Bar Harbor is by no means the brightest place in the world. And earlier this month, the tourist mecca on the tip of Mount Desert Island decided to keep it that way.

In what can only be described as a landslide for the dark side, voters on Nov. 4 approved the town's new "lighting ordinance" by a vote of 2,270 to 568. Its goal: to save the night sky from "light pollution" that in many parts of the country has already turned the dazzling Milky Way into a disappointing milky haze.

"The whole idea is to keep your light to yourself," said Peter Lord, who directs the Island Astronomy Institute.

The nonprofit institute, based in the small coastal town of Bernard, uses sophisticated equipment and software to measure the effect of man-made light on the night sky.

In recent years, Lord and his colleagues have worked with both Bar Harbor and neighboring Acadia National Park to protect what is widely considered one of the area's most valuable natural assets – the ability to look up at night and see, as Lord puts it, "the heavens in all their splendor."

Now if you're an anti-government type, you're no doubt going into orbit right about now. But before you start fuming about the long arm of the "light police," keep in mind that in Bar Harbor, at least, folks take their starlit nights seriously.

"There were some concerns that we were going to have some kind of light police out there," said Chris Fogg, executive director of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce. But once those fears were allayed, he said, "well over 80 percent" of the chamber's membership approved of the ordinance.

According to Ann Krieg, Bar Harbor's planning director, the ordinance will apply only to projects requiring site-plan review after Dec. 4. Basically, it mandates that nighttime lighting include "cutoffs" to prevent the light from projecting upward or outward beyond the area needing illumination.

Lord, noting that other Maine communities such as Rockland, Bangor and Kennebunkport already have similar ordinances, said the benefits of light control extend far beyond keeping the stars on at night.

For example, he said, recapturing the 15 percent of man-made light that now escapes upward could have a significant impact on reducing municipal, commercial and even residential energy costs.

Beyond that, the International Dark Sky Association (www.darksky.org) says that light pollution "disrupts global wildlife and ecological balance, and has been linked to negative consequences in human health."

(In one example cited by the association, lighted buildings and towers can so confuse flocks of migrating birds that they've been known to "circle the lights until they die of exhaustion.")

Friday morning, Bar Harbor Town Manager Dana Reed got a call from an angry man who'd read about the new light ordinance and couldn't believe a municipal government would do such a thing.

"I told him I've been in this town for 22 years and ever since I've lived here, people have talked about the need to preserve the night sky," Reed said. "It really is the local culture – not just in Bar Harbor, but throughout the island."

It's what happens when stars get in your eyes.

BILL NEMITZ, Portland Press Herald, November 23, 2008


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Regions: Mid Coast, Downeast


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