Gaslamp Will Retain Its Yellow Hue

One of the country’s toughest anti-light-pollution ordinances survived a challenge Monday when the San Diego City Council voted against allowing whiter street lights to be used in downtown’s Gaslamp Quarter.

Only council members Ron Roberts and Abbe Wolfsheimer spoke in favor of granting an exception to the street-lighting ordinance for the Gaslamp.

They also were the only two who voted against a motion by Councilman Bruce Henderson to add lights in several high-crime areas--but not in the Gaslamp--while letting the ordinance stand untouched.

At issue was preservation of street-lighting standards passed in October, 1985, that mandated only low-pressure sodium street lights in San Diego. This was intended as a way to keep night skies relatively dark for astronomers at Palomar Observatory and Mt. Laguna.

Most of the 60 people who attended the council meeting stood up when Robert Brucato, assistant director of Caltech’s Palomar, asked for a show of support for astronomers.

Trying to look at a faraway star or galaxy in a sky washed white with street lights is “like trying to listen to chamber music in a machine shop,” Bucato explained. “The music is there, but you can’t hear it.”

Low-pressure sodium street lights emit a yellowish hue in only a very narrow band of the light spectrum. Because of that, astronomers can easily ignore the light they cast or subtract it from images with filters or computer technology.

Other light sources such as incandescent bulbs look whiter to the eye because they emit light all along the spectrum--effectively washing out a telescope’s imaging capacity. Bucato noted that this has already happened to the observatory on Mt. Wilson because of light from the Los Angeles Basin.

Roberts countered by noting that San Diego State University, which operates the Mt. Laguna Observatory, is asking the city to do something that SDSU itself doesn’t do. Parking lots at SDSU are lighted with white lights, he noted.

Roberts and businessmen who testified said the yellowish glow of low-pressure sodium lights fails to give people the feeling that the Gaslamp is safe.

“I don’t know, frankly, whether those 16 blocks in the Gaslamp area will be any safer with (other types) of lights. But I do know that it will be perceived as safer,” said Leo Sullivan, an owner of Reidy O’Neil’s, a bar and restaurant on 4th Avenue.

“This area is the front porch of the Convention Center area, and we believe that there should be a light on on the front porch when those people arrive,” said Michael McDade, representing the Gaslamp Quarter Council and Gaslamp Merchants Assn.

After the vote, Gaslamp business representatives said they hope a study by the Centre City Development Corp. will find ways to light their storefronts to look more inviting despite what they call the ghastly monochrome of low-pressure sodium lights.

Pam Hamilton, executive vice president of CCDC, said a lighting consultant is expected to be hired later this month. The consultant will look at possible changes in the antique-style globes on street lights in Gaslamp, as well as storefront lighting changes.