New law aims to keep lights low in Far West Texas

By BENJAMIN WERMUND

FAR WEST TEXAS – At night, McDonald Observatory is one of the darkest places in America.

Far-away cities create domes of light on the horizon — the only interruptions to the continuous blackness, aside from the stars and moon.

It’s like that for a reason. Astronomers need a dark sky to better observe the cosmos.

The dark is well preserved by the counties surrounding the observatory, Jeff Davis, Presidio, Hudspeth, Culberson and Brewster — and a new state law aims to keep it that way.

As civilization continues to expand, a law by State Rep. Pete Gallego would expand light regulations with it, even farther from the observatory, requiring counties within 57 miles to enforce light codes.

“I wanted to put something in statute that made sure that McDonald is protected. I think it’s one of the jewels, not only in West Texas, but for the whole state,” Gallego, said. Gallego authored the light regulation bill this legislative session that the governor signed it into law earlier this month.

Current state law gives counties the authority to regulate lighting if the observatory requests them to do so. After the new law takes effect at the beginning of next year, counties within the 57-mile radius of the observatory — Jeff Davis, Presidio, Brewster, Culberson, Hudspeth, and now Reeves and Pecos — will be required to create and enforce light regulations.

But even some of the counties that already regulate light will have to formalize their regulations a bit.

“In order to be able to fairly, uniformly do this around the county, we’re going to have to step up to some more maturity in our code enforcement,” Presidio County judge Paul Hunt said. “Right now we’re working on trying to imagine how we’ll budget this.”

Hunt said the county is considering sharing some of the code enforcement duties with cities.

“The idea of pitching this as a joint venture for code enforcement is one way we can take some of the sting of the cost out by sharing it and learning to work together a little better,” he said.

Under the new law, the counties have a variety of options for meeting the new regulation requirements. They can create a permit to install certain types of outdoor lighting, establish fees to cover the costs of issuing the permits, prohibit the use of certain types of outdoor lighting, establish requirements for shielding outdoor lights, or regulate the times during which certain outdoor lighting can be used.

Hunt said he was glad to see the law pass with little opposition, especially since it has the potential to set a precedent.

“It’s the first time the municipalities will be required to do something by state law,” he said.

Reeves County Judge Joe Shuster said the county will do its best to live within the new law.

“Unless it’s impossible to live by, then we’ll try to get it changed the next go-round,” Shuster said. He didn’t have any idea what the county’s new regulations might look like. Neither did Pecos County Judge W.J. Bang.

William ‘Bill’ Wren, a special assistant to the observatory superintendent whose main mission is to educate West Texas cities on observatory-friendly lighting practices, said the new law isn’t going to change his job description.

“I’m still going to have to convince cities to follow good lighting practices,” Wren said.

Wren said he’s had great success locally — even the big Stripes sign in Marfa uses LED lighting that stays on the property for the most part. He said the lighting industry is already moving toward lighting that creates less light pollution, so it’s really more about educating about what types of light make for good visibility.

“Low-glare fixtures are what we’re recommending,” Wren said.

The observatory provides free light shields to the public and the utility will install them at a customer’s request, also for free, Wren said.

“There’s just tons of good lighting in the area,” Wren said. “The trouble is we have communities far flung that are much larger. El Paso is the brightest thing in our sky besides the full moon.”

El Paso is 160 miles from the observatory, but Wren said it still looms on the western horizon as a dome of light.

“The atmosphere is scattering light from all over the desert southwest,” Wren said. “The lightness of the background sky is increasing.”

For more info on light pollution and good lighting, visit: mcdonaldobservatory.org/darkskies/