Trees, Lights, and “DLYKLH”: A Contrarian View

By Linda Felaco

My husband and I moved to Charlestown the year before last, and we really love it here. Buying a house here was the best move we ever could have made at this point in our lives. But some things puzzle me about the town’s approach to certain types of issues. From reading Progressive Charlestown, I’ve learned that the town is facing a state mandate to provide affordable housing, just when property values and therefore tax revenues are down. In the debate about the beach bathrooms, there were those who said we couldn’t even afford to build them. That’s an issue of basic sanitation, what makes outbreaks of infectious diseases such as typhoid, cholera, etc., a thing of the past. Not exactly a luxury item.

So why are we dithering about trees, lights, and Driving Like Your Kids Live Here? I realize the horse has already left the barn on the tree ordinance, but, if I understand it correctly, invasive species like Japanese knotweed qualify as “trees” once they grow to 4.5 feet in height and 2 inches in diameter, meaning they can’t be cut down. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is nuts. I think we all have reason to be glad there’s no tree warden to enforce this.

Japanese knotweed - invasive or protected?

Yes, trees are lovely. I wouldn't want to live without them. They heat my house in the winter, I don’t think we could even breathe without them. I’ve literally been a treehugger since I was 10 years old and went to Camp Hoffman in the summer and the punishment for talking after lights out was to go out in the woods and hug a tree.

But trees can also kill you. We had a 75-year-old oak tree in the front yard at our old house and one day my husband was doing yard work and heard a cracking noise and looked up and saw one of the limbs about to fall down out of a clear blue sky. Thank god he wasn't running the mower or anything else that’s noisy and actually heard it before it landed on him. When we had the tree cut down, the tree company told us if the limb had fallen on the house, it would have completely destroyed both stories.

And I don’t know about you, but I hate being without electricity, especially out here in the boonies where we rely on it to power our wells, meaning without electricity we have no water either. Trees along roadways need to be properly maintained and if necessary, cut down and perhaps replanted with varieties that don't grow beyond a certain height or in such a way that they interfere with power lines.

We had no end of problems at our old house because of trees in the county right of way along the road that had branches hanging down over the power lines coming into our house. The county wouldn't cut anything without a dispensation from the state arborist, and it took 3 months just to get them to come out and look at the tree and "tag" it to be examined at a later date, at which point hurricane season was over and you'd probably already spent days without power or had a falling limb damage your car. Not to mention the accidents caused when branches fell in the street.

And don’t get me wrong, being able to see more stars at night was one of the many things we looked forward to in getting out of the city, but on closer examination, I think the proposed lighting ordinance is a solution in search of a problem. And some of the wording I find troubling. One of the stated purposes of the ordinance is “To protect the residents and surrounding environment, including light sensitive plants and animals, from the effects of light pollution.” As an editor, I’m in the word business, and when we put stuff in either bold or italics, it signifies that those words are more important than the surrounding ones. And here we have, in both bold *and* italics, the words “light sensitive plants and animals” in a sentence that claims to also protect residents. So whose needs come first here? Does my need for nighttime illumination to get myself home safely after dark outweigh the needs of plants and animals? According to this sentence as written, it does not.

And “light pollution” is a misnomer. Light is not a pollutant in the sense that, say, dioxin or PCBs or benzene are pollutants. Light is a good thing. It’s what lets plants grow, for crying out loud. Can we please hereby banish this invented phrase “light pollution”? There’s no such thing.

As it happens, I have a friend who's an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and he says you don't need dark skies to see Saturn and professional telescopes are already sited in remote locations with dark skies to begin with. I asked him why he doesn't live out in Montana or somewhere where he'd have a better view of the skies. He says likes Cambridge better.

One of the most basic questions in law is “cui bono,” or who benefits. Dark sky ordinances really only benefit the suburban backyard stargazer, but backyards are not prime stargazing areas and never will be; you need to get up to higher elevation to get past the effects of the atmosphere. Seems to me the light ordinance is just a way to get neighbors ratting each other out any time they’re bothered by another neighbor’s porch light.

Still not convinced? Consider the executive summary of this report from the Independence Institute:

• Light is a good, not a form of pollution. Night-time lighting greatly expands human freedom of action.

• Urban lighting in the United States is not harming advanced astronomical research.

• Amateur astronomy is best conducted away from urban areas.

• Dark sky ordinances mainly benefit casual urban stargazers.

• Research shows that improved street lighting reduces crime by 20 percent.

The report goes on to state that “it is absurd to contend that ‘small-town character’ really depends on the kind of stargazing distinctions which are preserved by” dark-sky ordinances. “Small towns above the Arctic Circle have nearly perpetual sunlight in the summer, but it would be ludicrous to claim that those towns lose their small-town feel because no stars are visible.”

Furthermore, “full cut off” lights (no light above the horizontal plane of the bulb) as required by Charlestown’s proposed lighting ordinance “can make energy use less efficient. When a light pole uses full cut off (as opposed to regular ‘cut off’” or ‘semi-cut off’), then the pole radiates very little light laterally (that is, 0 to 10 degrees below the horizontal plane). As a result, the pole illuminates a significantly smaller area of the ground. Thus, if a parking lot owner wants to cover the entire lot with at least some light, and municipal regulations force the owner to use full cut off shields on the light poles, then the parking lot owner will have to use more poles, which will be spaced relatively closer together. As a result, more electricity will be used to illuminate the parking lot.” Which of course increases energy use and costs.

Now for the “Drive Like Your Kids Live Here” signs the town council just voted to purchase from some couple in Connecticut (friends of a TC member mayhaps?). Yes, traffic safety is important, and I certainly would never encourage anyone to drive in an unsafe manner. But when was the last time you told someone they were driving like a maniac and they actually changed their driving behavior? Thought so. Everyone thinks they’re the good driver and everyone else is a maniac. It’s like the old joke: Everyone driving slower than you are is a moron and everyone driving faster than you are is crazy. Besides, with all the texting and iPod and GPS fiddling everyone engages in while they’re driving nowadays, who’s even going to see these signs? I rest my case.