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Date: 1/9/2024
NORTHAMPTON — The city of Northampton is on the verge of upgrading its outdoor lighting policies to promote more energy efficiency and better safety.
The ordinance — which has come in front of the City Council, the Planning Board and the Legislative Matters committee — will basically upend an antiquated outdoor lighting ordinance that has been implemented in the city since 2007.
“[This amendment] really creates more parameters around light, color or temperature, a little bit more specificity about glare control, location of lighting and direct lighting,” said Carolyn Misch, the city’s director of planning and sustainability. “It also introduces a cutoff time for business and commercial districts.”
The ordinance states that the goal of these new amendments is to create standards that result in lighting systems that are designed, constructed and installed to address offsite impacts/glare control, environmental impacts and curtailing the degradation of the night sky.
“All outdoor light fixtures and illuminated signs for all uses and structures within the city of Northampton must be designed, located, installed and directed in such a manner as to limit light trespass at the property lines and glare at any location on or off the property,” reads the current ordinance language.
The new amendment also builds greater safety measures and aims to reduce the energy demand and carbon footprint with strategies like eliminating mercury vapor and incandescent lighting fixtures.
The ordinance also provides specific lighting standards for commercial districts and residential districts. For example, it currently states that all nonresidential site lights must be turned off one hour after close of business. However, lights may be set to motion controls after close of business as long as they are timed to turn off five minutes after motion is detected.
During the Jan. 4 City Council meeting, Misch said that these new standards will only apply to new installations in the city.
“Just because the standards that you’re looking at today and through this process introduce some new parameters and some different controls, it doesn’t mean that the lights all over the city will change and now they’ll comply to this,” Misch said. “All the existing lights out there will continue to be there.”
The new outdoor lighting ordinance garnered support during the public comment period of the Jan. 4 meeting.
James Lowenthal, an astronomy professor at Smith College who also spearheads Northampton City Lights and Dark Sky Massachusetts, said that he strongly supports the new ordinance.
“It’s consistent with the five principles of responsible outdoor lighting that the city has already endorsed,” Lowenthal said. “We urge you not to weaken any of the current aspects of the ordinance.”
Lowenthal specifically encouraged the council to keep the current language that states that “the emission of light by all luminaires in all lighting must have a correlated color temperature of the light between 0 to 2,700 degrees Kelvin,” after it was recommended by the city’s Planning Board that the color temperature maximum should be set at 3,000 degrees Kelvin.
“There’s lots of evidence that 2,700 [degrees Kelvin] is less harmful for all the reasons that light pollution is harmful,” Lowenthal said.
The ordinance has so far gone in front of the Planning Board and Legislative Matters committee for a joint public hearing back in the fall. It received a positive recommendation for both, but Legislative Matters decided to keep the maximum color temperature at 2,700 degrees Kelvin.
On Jan. 4, the full council decided to refer the ordinance back to the Legislative Matters committee for further scrutiny, especially since there are new councilors who need to be brought to speed on the issue.
A date for that Legislative Matters committee meeting has not been set as of press time.