Tucson Turns Down Lights for Observatory : Arizonans Proud of Role in Preventing Light Pollution By TOM GREELEY, <i> Times Staff Writer</i>

When Don Mackey moved here to open up an automobile dealership, he upheld a tradition carried on by his business partners at 14 showrooms throughout the Southwest: He flew a massive, 700-square-foot American flag atop a 100-foot pole, illuminated by a glaring spotlight.

Mackey spent $20,000 for the flag, and he intended it to be an attention-grabber. That it was, beyond his wildest expectations. As he recalled wryly, “Nobody ever got the kind of wrastlin’ I got when they put up the flags in Oklahoma City or Wichita Falls or Albuquerque.”

Mackey, it seemed, was violating the Tucson’s newly toughened lighting ordinance by spotlighting the flag. In the initial confusion after the enactment of the 1981 laws, Mackey had been mistakenly issued a city permit to light his flag.

But instead of fighting City Hall over the spotlight, Mackey was persuaded to join the legions of Arizonans who are unabashedly proud of their role in setting a national trend to prevent light pollution and preserve the dark sky necessary for astronomical research at major facilities like the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County and the National Science Foundation’s Kitt Peak Observatory, 40 miles from Tucson.

“There’s a lot of positive feeling about these laws in Tucson, and I’d be a fool to get into a fight over something that really seems good for everybody in the community,” Mackey said.

“It came down to a question of being a good citizen--and turning off that light. It sure hasn’t hurt my business any--I doubt the law hurts any businesses in Tucson. And the work they do on that mountain gives the whole state something to be proud of.”

The need to reduce the sky glow if astronomical research is to continue in the Southwest (Mt. Palomar and Kitt Peak are two of only six sites in the nation where the atmospheric conditions are suitable for the most powerful telescopes) was underscored last year when the Carnegie Institution decided to close the once-famed Mt. Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles, the nation’s first major observatory.

When the City and County of San Diego recently adopted ordinances regulating public and private lighting at the behest of scientists from observatories on Mt. Palomar and Mt. Laguna, Tucson’s laws served as their models, just as they have for more than 25 cities and counties in Arizona and New Mexico.

Tucson has not yet ordered a conversion of its street lights to low-pressure sodium, as the City and County of San Diego did but the city has replaced mercury-vapor lamps with high-pressure sodium and placed shields above them so less light shines toward the sky. Similar shields also are required on billboards and might soon be required at recreational fields.

Even those with the strongest reasons to be skeptical, like Mackey, now speak enthusiastically about the lighting laws four years after their adoption.

In Mackey’s case, there were more than a few citizens who felt the ordinance should be waived for Old Glory, if nothing else.

“You had to feel sorry for the guy, because there was confusion over his permit,” said Karen Heidel, an energy coordinator in the city manager’s office at Tucson City Hall. “And the patriotic thing put us in a tough position. But we wanted to show we were serious about enforcing the law.”

“It seemed pretty damned ridiculous at first,” Mackey said. “It wasn’t my fault they gave me the permit. And frankly, when I first moved here, the law seemed stupid. I pictured one guy up there on the mountain with a little telescope. I had no idea how important Kitt Peak was.”

Priding itself as “the national research center for ground-based astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere, Kitt Peak is home to 11 National Science Foundation telescopes, as well as smaller observatories operated by the University of Arizona, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan.

Astronomers from the National Science Foundation use the facilities year-round, and each year about 250 research projects, submitted by scientists from around the world, are performed there as well.

Tucson Mayor Lou Murphy and scientists from Kitt Peak arranged a meeting with Mackey to explain the reason for the law.

They pointed out that astronomy is a $40-million industry in Arizona (ranking in the top 10 high-tech fields in the state) and particularly significant in the Tucson area. Mackey learned that the research performed at Kitt Peak could be duplicated only at a handful of locations in the country, and that without stringent controls on lighting, the dark sky needed for that research would be blotted out by the glow as Tucson rapidly grew to a city of more than 500,000.

A compromise was struck--Mackey turns off the spotlight illuminating the flag at 10 p.m. and has agreed to convert an adjacent parking lot’s lights to the low-pressure sodium variety preferred by astronomers.

“They set the trend we’re following,” said Robert Brucato, a Caltech astronomer directing the legislative movement in Southern California. “And we point to Arizona as an example when people are nervous about the changes we’re talking about. If these things work there, they will work here as well, and the support from the people will come around.”

“I don’t think anyone here has any trouble living under these laws,” said Heidel, who wrote Tucson’s amended ordinance. “People always are afraid of change, and when you talk about changing the way their city is lit, it scares them at first. But I think San Diegans will find their new lighting laws very easy to exist under.”

“We worried initially because in the confusion we feared the new lighting ordinances would create a lot of crime prevention problems for us,” said Mark Wilson, who has become the security lighting expert with the Tucson Police Department. “But the ordinance forced us all to be more conscious about our lights. We’ve turned it into an asset in fighting crime.”

Heidel credited conversions from mercury-vapor lamps to high-pressure sodium with reducing Tucson’s street lighting costs by 15% since the tougher ordinance went into effect four years ago this month. “We own our own system, which puts us in a pretty unique position,” said the city’s energy coordinator. “We’re pretty proud of the fact that we’ve been able to save money at the same time we are adding to our street lighting system.”

Robert Swain, president of the Southern Arizona chapter of American Institute of Architects and a practicing architect in Tucson since 1961, said the laws haven’t stopped the city from “the achievement of good lighting design.”

Lee Beaudry, another Tucson auto dealer who initially opposed the law, said his business “experienced absolutely no merchandising handicaps” from the lighting restrictions.

Beaudry said he and other Tucson residents “would have been willing to suffer some detriment in order to protect the investment that we firmly believe our community has in maintaining as hospitable as possible a physical environment for the astronomy fraternity.”

And Beaudry, like many other Tucson business owners, said, “Our lighting costs are somewhat less as a result of this conformity (to the ordinance) . . . .”

David Crawford, a National Science Foundation astronomer who has been associated with Kitt Peak since 1960, one year after the opening of what has evolved into a sprawling collection of observatories valued at more than $150 million, said “it’s a breeze” convincing people that “everybody wins under these lighting controls.

“The citizens have gotten to like it,” he said. “It’s helped them get excited about our research, which I think is a big plus. The residents know this is prestigious for the State of Arizona.

“Not that it was always that easy,” he recalled. “Cities in the Southwest were traditionally way overlit, and the people moving here seemed to like them that way. You expected flashy lights and neon when you came to the Old West.

“That’s why we didn’t want to wait until it was too late, like in Los Angeles, or even wait until we had to take quicker, more radical measures as they were forced to do in San Diego,” Crawford said.

“We could tell very early on that the Southwest would grow, probably as rapidly as Southern California had grown, and we wanted to make sure we could prevent the sky glow from getting worse as the population expanded. We’re proud of that accomplishment, and we intend to do more, as our needs and those of the community merit it.”

In 1958, Flagstaff, also in Arizona, became the first city in the U.S. to regulate lighting, protecting the research at nearby Lowell Observatory. Fourteen years later, Tucson was the second. Twenty cities, including Phoenix, nine counties and two Indian reservations in Arizona have followed suit, most of them since 1981, when Tucson amended its ordinance and enacted most of its current regulations. Nogales, Mexico, just across the border, has a lighting ordinance as well.

“Tucson always had way too much lighting, but we didn’t really come to realize it until the energy crisis, when we realized how much money we were wasting on ineffective lighting schemes,” Heidel said.

“Monitoring lighting and sky glow is an ongoing process,” Crawford said. “We’re always on the lookout for new things to do.”

This year, a newly appointed commission of Tucson and Pima County officials, along with business representatives and astronomers from Kitt Peak, is considering amendments to local lighting ordinances.

Its members, including Crawford and Beaudry, regularly visit the hills above the city at night, taking pictures that identify “hot spots,” or areas where unnecessary or illegal lighting is being used.

Crawford said that usually “we can go to a tennis court, or a business, and show the people in charge that there is unnecessary glare there. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t get cooperation--all it takes is a little education.”

Low-pressure sodium street lights--the amber lights now commonly seen in San Diego--are being used experimentally in parts of Tucson, and a full-scale conversion could be the next step here. “Frankly, that hasn’t been necessary yet,” Crawford said. “We didn’t have to move as radically as they did in San Diego. But it’s our next logical step.”

Another area of concern is the multitude of lighted recreation fields in Tucson. Many now are equipped with shielded lamps (Tucson was among the first cities to experiment with such lights at playing fields), and the city has considered restricting hours of play as well.

“We have to be realistic, though,” Heidel said. “We wouldn’t consider shaking up people’s life styles unless it was absolutely necessary. People here love their recreation, and with our heat, you just have to play at night. But you can be sure the lights are as effective as possible. That’s what I call good enforcement of the law.”