A Plea in the Desert: Let There Be Dark

Inky black skies are as much a part of the scenery as cactus and the smell of creosote after it rains.

But even in the remote desert, the night sky is getting lighter and the stars are growing more faint. Spotlights from casinos, the fluorescence of fast-food joints, the ever-closer glow from development in the Palm Springs area, and even floodlights from residents determined to light every inch of five-acre lots are starting to outshine the heavenly bodies.

So this desert town and others like it are passing laws to ensure that the starry, starry nights don’t become dim, dim memories.

Last year Yucca Valley strengthened and clarified its vaguely written “dark sky” ordinance requiring lights to be shielded, pointed down and not shining onto someone else’s property. Twentynine Palms passed a similar law in 1995. In the neighboring unincorporated communities of Joshua Tree and Wonder Valley, a citizens action group is lobbying the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to pass such legislation for those areas.

The campaign is part of a broader movement to curtail light pollution. “Protect the night” has been an environmental rallying call from Arizona and New Mexico to Japan and Australia.

In Southern California, the movement has been spurred by environmentalists, astronomers and backyard stargazers who say they want to protect one of the state’s few remaining areas where people can still appreciate the undiminished wonders of the night sky.

“In the desert, the air has a transparency,” said Robert Brucato, assistant director of Caltech’s Palomar Observatory near San Diego. “The sky is spectacular.”

But some desert dwellers have fears abut turning down the lights.

“I’m not trying to ruin the stars, but I have an honest-to-God concern with safety,” said Carol Smith, who owns a Chrysler dealership in Yucca Valley. “We’ve had two cars stolen, and they were both from dark areas. The first question insurance companies ask is: ‘Are you well lit?’ ”

Those concerns are shared by Lucy Selsor, 70, who lives on a quiet road where neighbors are far apart and coyotes howl through the night.

Selsor has a 25-foot, 1,000-watt beacon on her front fence. Her late husband installed it two decades ago and wired it to come on at sunset and go off at sunrise.

“If anyone comes near my gate I can see them,” said Selsor, a resident of Morongo Valley, an unincorporated area about five miles east of Yucca Valley. “No one’s going to come in when they know you can see them.”

Selsor’s light is bright enough to color the sky for a quarter-mile and shines in the bedroom window of Winnie Brewer, an artist, and her husband, Bill, a photographer.

“The best thing the desert has going for it is the night sky. It’s what got us to buy a house here,” said Winnie, who moved here from Los Angeles three years ago. “And now I can’t see the stars out my window. I can’t even sleep.”

It’s a romantic notion, thinking of the stars as an endangered species, she said. But that’s how she sees them.

Brewer, a star lover since childhood, talked to Selsor and wrote her letters. But others in the area told Selsor not to think about dimming the light.

“They told me, ‘Lucy, you need that light for security. Who do these new people think they are?’ ” Selsor said.

Even as city officials have passed light pollution laws, they have tried to remain flexible.

“We had a lot of elderly who felt they needed their lights for safety, and some of the businesses have also insisted on more lights for security,” said Carol Miller, a Yucca Valley city planner. “The city tries to be a good neighbor and enforces only when there’s a complaint.”

Bob Gent, a spokesman for the International Dark-Sky Assn., said that unlike other environmental quandaries, in which issues are complex and solutions elusive, protecting night skies can be as simple as the right lampshade. The group’s Web site (https://www.darksky.org) covers everything from finding sensitive light fixtures to writing a light ordinance.

“We’re not saying, ‘Don’t have lights.’ We’re saying, ‘Keep the lights on the ground where you need them, not in the sky,’ ” Gent said. “This issue isn’t hard. It’s not like nuclear waste or toxic landfills. The only thing we’re fighting is lack of awareness.”

But even if every desert resident climbed aboard the cause with full cut shades that keep light from being emitted above the horizontal plane, there would still be an ever-increasing glow from the rapidly expanding Coachella Valley.

“One of the reasons people come up here is to see a billion stars,” said Ernest Quintana, Joshua Tree National Park superintendent. “But it’s changing as the urban environment encroaches.”

In the last two years, campers in the southwestern corner of the park, near Indio and two dazzling casinos, have been complaining that they can’t see the stars because of the glow of lights.

Quintana has added light pollution to the lengthy list of environmental concerns he wants addressed by each proposed development near park borders. He is pushing for broad light pollution controls for the entire area.

“Where else are people going to go to be able to see the stars?” he asked.

Sam Davidson, an amateur astronomer who led the charge for Yucca Valley’s dark sky ordinance, said many locals are very familiar--and very in touch with--stars and the dance of the planets.

“We do still have beautiful dark night skies, and you can see the lights of the universe,” said Davidson, a retired aerospace engineer. “But the point is: We want to protect it now before it’s gone.”