Approve ordinance to redirect man-made light
On a clear night, the Milky Way cuts across the sky and down to the horizon like a celestial lightning bolt, a giant, luminescent spear shrouded in a graceful veil of back-lighted stardust.
Paul Paradis, a town councilor and hardware store owner, voted against the ordinance, which he calls "intrusive."
GOOD NEIGHBOR LAWS
The sight has always been up there. But today, few Americans can see it, especially not in brightly lighted cities like Boston. On the densely populated East Coast, Mount Desert Island is one of the last inhabited places where the naked eye can still clearly observe the heavenly wonders that have inspired religion, mythology, science, and culture.
To preserve that natural spectacle - and protect one of the tourist attractions of the island's Acadia National Park - voters in Bar Harbor this month approved a "dark sky" ordinance aimed at limiting the manmade lighting that has blotted out the view of the stars over much of the country. Bright lights installed after Dec. 4 will have to be shielded from the sky to illuminate only the area beneath them.
"The idea is you put the light where you need it," said Peter Lord, who directs Island Astronomy Institute, a nonprofit organization on Mount Desert Island that studies the effect of manmade light on the night sky.
"There are many in Boston who have never seen the full specter of the Milky Way. In the United States, what you have is a generation of children who have never seen it."
Preserving the sight the ancients took for granted goes beyond saving a pretty view. The promise of a rare, unimpeded stargazing experience has the potential to draw more visitors to Maine, which depends heavily on tourism.
Chris Fogg, executive director of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, estimates that 20 million people live within a day's drive of the Down East resort - all potential visitors, especially during an economic downturn, when many people go sightseeing closer to home.
He cites a recent National Geographic article that recommends Bar Harbor as one of the four best places in the country to see the stars.
Lord, who helped draft the ordinance, sees it as a stepping stone toward a more light-conscious society, in which understanding the correlation between the use of light and the view of the night sky becomes as widespread as people's awareness that recycling is good for the environment.
"If we are able to document the change," Lord said, "Bar Harbor will be able to encourage people to go beyond the basic minimum requirements of the ordinance."
Bar Harbor's night skies are so clear because the town sits on an island with no industry, a national park, and a large section of coastline that faces open ocean.
Three other communities on the island already enforce some restrictions on outdoor lights, but just a few miles over the bridge that connects Mount Desert Island to the mainland is Ellsworth, where signs and glaring parking lots cast a bright, yellow haze.
source....
