UK Clean Neighbourhoods and environment bill

Hi,

A bill in the UK parliment addressing light pollution is being introduced

The bill:
tinyurl.com/6xnyw

News article:
tinyurl.com/44oa4

This caught me completely by surprise, as it seems to have the CfDS. The first I heard was when a journalist rang me to see what I thought of it.

Now that I've had a little time to examine it, it seems there are good and bad points.

Light pollution would be a statutory offence in the UK. Sounds good, the detail though is that a statutory nuisance is "artificial light emitted from premises so as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance."

So a 500W security floodlight shining into your garden might be an obvious nuisance to you, you could have to show it is prejudicial to your health to have it removed. Darren Baskill from the CfDS has pointed out that his local council local council said they would only replace a street light with a doctors note. The proposed legislation stops well short of saying that unwanted wasted light shining into your property is a nuisance and legally should be removed.

It seems however that this is at lest a token in the right direction. UK law for the first time will recognise that light pollution can be a nuisance however I cant see this law resulting in a criminal offence. Hopefully the law will add weight to the dark sky campaign in the UK and make it easier for complains to councils as well as civil court cases in light pollution.

When I've studied this more I'll send out a press release probably asking the Irish government to do more.

Cheers,
~Al

Please feel free to distribute to your local media. I'll be sending a letter to the minister on Monday.

PRESS RELEASE:
Light Pollution groups call for light pollution to be recognised as a nuisance.

Sender:
Irish Light Pollution Awareness Campaign (ILPAC)
Albert White, albert.white@gmail.com, Tel +353 86 8048149, www.irishastronomy.org/ilpac

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Under a bill published last Wednesday, light pollution is to become a statutory nuisance in the UK. This will mean that anyone who finds that artificial light emitting from premises is "prejudicial to health or a nuisance" will be able to complain to their local Council.

In Ireland no similar bill exists. The best that anyone can do who is affected by a bright light shining on to their premises or keeping them awake at night is to politely ask the offender to reposition the light.

The Irish Light Pollution Awareness Campaign (ILPAC) will be asking the Irish government to take similar steps to ensure that intrusive or excessive lighting is recognised as a nuisance in law. This will give the public the right to have a neighbor's or Council's light adjusted so it does not pose a nuisance to them.

"Kerry County Council have taken the initiative in their development plan to require that proposed developments 'will be required to demonstrate that the lighting scheme proposed is the minimum needed for security and working purposes.' Clare County council is also considering similar measures", says Mr. Albert White, Deputy Chairperson of ILPAC. "But legislation is required at a national level to ensure that light pollution can be treated as a nuisance and provide the public with the right to object to it."

"With the introduction of the Kyoto treaty Ireland is set to face massive fines for pollutant emissions in the coming years -- many of the pollutants come from energy production" notes Mr. White. "By using more efficient lighting we can reduce the energy required and save us all money in our electricity bills as well as Kyoto fines."

Legislation is not required for people to take action. Many of the so called “security” floodlights sold in Ireland are rated at 500W whereas the maximum recommended by the Institute of Lighting Engineers is 150W. This means that households and business can reduce by a third the running cost of some lights by using a lower powered lamp and adjusting the light to point only where it is needed.

The UK legislation, while welcomed by light pollution campaigners, does have some flaws. Dr. Darren Baskill from the UK's Campaign for Dark Skies points out that there are many sites exempt from the legislation; for example, with regard to exempt 'bus stations' he notes "that they should be the first on the list for inclusion since you have heavy vehicles and lots of pedestrians ... shining lights in to bus drivers eyes is exactly what this bill should be controlling".

And I spent half an hour talking to the Irish Times why the other day?

A not very good (and that being polite) article lifted from the Irish Times site below...

Turned off by too much light

With Britain outlawing light pollution, Mary Russell looks at why it's OK to be in the dark

Does mention of Christmas bring on visions of flashing snowflakes and cute electric reindeer, the neighbour's garden with its floodlit manger and illuminated Santa plastered to the wall? Get rid of them, cries our inner Scrooge. Christmas lights waste energy. "No, no," says the cheerful opposition. Light is important, especially when the dark days of December make us feel down. We need more light, not less.

As any night worker knows, light deprivation can interfere with our circadian rhythm, causing our internal on-off switch to malfunction and go into jet lag mode. Scandinavians, know all about the effects of winter darkness, which is why they fill their houses with candlelight. However, the need for light has to be set against the fact that both winter and nocturnal darkness provide the rest periods the Earth and the human body must have in order to renew themselves.

So where exactly can we find this darkness that we need? It may come as a surprise to learn that, no matter how far we are from artificial lighting, we are never completely in the dark. "The earth glows at night," explains David Moore of Astronomy Ireland. "The sun pumps up atoms during the day and these re-combine at night to give off what we call air-glow."

In rural Co Donegal, your night-time view of the heavens will be majestic. In the Sahara, it will be biblical. But look at any global photograph taken from space at night and you will see huge and increasing areas of light pollution, which shows some us are living in a limbo of artificial daylight.Sadly, so polluted by artificial light is our world, just as some children have never seen snow, so many have never seen this magical air-glow.

In Britain this week, a Bill was published to make light pollution a statutory offence. Anyone who finds that artificial light from a premises is "prejudicial to health or a nuisance" will be able to complain to the local council. If nothing is done about it, the offender could be fined up to £50,000 (€72,308). Light pollution comes from the estimated 30 per cent of energy that is wasted, usually by excess light spilling on to pavements or leaking up to the sky."You're paying to light up the underbellies of seagulls and jets," is how Moore puts it.

Glare, light trespass and sky-glow are the unwelcome by-products of this pollution. The first happens when streets, motorways and roundabouts are dangerously over-bright. The second is when decorative and security lights leak into adjoining gardens and the last describes the orange reflection in the sky of an urban area.

"From the astronomer's point of view, light pollution here is not a huge problem," says Moore. "We are the least-densely populated area in Europe so you only have to drive 10 miles to get clear of Dublin's sky-glow, whereas you'd have to drive 100 miles to get away from London's." Nevertheless, lighting engineers are aware of the potential for pollution, which is why people like Ian Winning, senior executive engineer in Cork City Council's traffic department, are keen to cut down on the use of badly-shaded street lights.

"The thing is to put that into the design right at the beginning," he says.

In a recent project to light the 19th-century St Patrick's Church on the city's Glanmire Road, Cork City Council and the Friends of St Patrick's Renovation Committee erected low-brightness lanterns with well-designed reflectors, which provide lighting for people using the church and also illuminate the old limestone walls. In England, the Archbishop of York and Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor called on churches to use low energy bulbs.

In Dublin, the two best examples of minimal-pollution street lighting are the newly restored Portobello Bridge, over the Grand Canal, and Wolfe Tone Park, close to the Jervis Street Shopping Centre. Gone are the orange sodium lights. Instead, there are clean perpendicular lines of lamp-posts furnished with well-positioned reflectors that cast light downwards, thus causing no glare. Paddy Craven, senior engineer in Dublin City Council's lighting department, is responsible for 45,000 street lights plus the 25 festive trees that appear throughout the city for Christmas. "We're phasing out the orange sodium lights and replacing them with light-emitting diodes, which are more efficient," he says. "We're also installing more uplights like the ones set into the pavement in O'Connell Street."

Two years ago, Armagh Observatory launched a campaign to persuade the city to be mindful of light wastage and set an example itself by using more focused lighting. Even more admirable is the Czech Republic, the first country to enact legislation to eliminate light pollution. But however much some may wish for less light, few will deny the pleasure of a cheerful Christmas tree or the reassurance of the candle in the window.

For myself, on a moonless night walk in the Sahara desert, I will always treasure the mesmerising sight of my own shadow, cast by the light of distant stars.

"From the astronomer's point of view, light pollution here is not a huge problem," says Moore. "We are the least-densely populated area in Europe so you only have to drive 10 miles to get clear of Dublin's sky-glow, whereas you'd have to drive 100 miles to get away from London's." Nevertheless, lighting engineers are aware of the potential for pollution, which is why people like Ian Winning, senior executive engineer in Cork City Council's traffic department, are keen to cut down on the use of badly-shaded street lights.

If thats the case then what is the orange light in the general direction of dublin

I live just outside Edenderry 40 miles from dublin and the sky glow is clearly pronounced..

Down home in Limerick the city lights and corresponding sky glow can be seen from 20 miles away where i come from. and last time i checked limerick was a little bit smaller than Dublin :roll:

I think 10 miles is being over generous :lol:

I can see the skyglow from Adare no problem, I even saw it from Newcastlewest one evening, it really depends on how hazy the air is.

I cant imagine you'd have no glow only 10 miles from the edge of Dublin, but it might not be terrible, but still there ?!?
I remember when I used to live in Dublin that we'd have to go miles down the Wicklow mountains to get a good sky.

...light pollution here is not a huge problem," says Moore

There you go Al, you can pack up ILPAC and stop worring about it. Apparently it's not a problem! :roll: