Ericson is design principal at Stantec Consulting Services. He is a longtime associate of the Dark Sky International nonprofit group and lives in North Encanto. As we celebrate International Dark Sky Week, April 2-8, I think back to where we were in the mid-1980s and where we are now regarding our nighttime environment with respect to light pollution and how it affects our view of the stars and our enjoyment of our homes and the environment around us. As a city and county during the ‘80s, San Diego supported our local observatories and implemented outdoor lighting ordinances to help minimize light pollution. As humans, we are affected by artificial light at night. We need natural darkness to allow our body cycles to operate correctly. White light at night impacts this circadian rhythm and our health. One way to remedy this is to make our night lighting warmer in color. This is expressed as “color temperature” measured in degrees Kelvin. Similar to how you can make the screen on your cell phone warmer at night, we can do this with outdoor lighting by changing the ordinances to require lower (warmer) color temperatures. Current thinking is outdoor lighting should be less than 2700K to 3000K. This is similar to an incandescent light in appearance. Light pollution not only includes light that shines up but also light that causes glare into our eyes as we drive and light trespass into neighboring yards and windows. Lighting technology has evolved, and these ordinances should be rewritten with state-of-the-art lighting fixtures in mind and a current understanding of the impacts of light at night on human health and animals. The county ordinance was partially updated recently to make it possible for Julian to become a Dark Sky Community. But the rest of the ordinance still has not been updated to consider new LED lighting technology. The city ordinance was updated in 2022 from the 2012 version to actually increase the amount of unshielded light allowed! Very disappointing. Now is the time to improve and update the current ordinances and a great opportunity for San Diego City Council members and county supervisors to lead by example. No need for capital expenditures, just replace the existing lighting with better lights as they need replacing. Public education can be done on the city’s and county’s websites and at retail stores that sell replacement luminaries. Training is needed for project plan checking and site inspection to ensure proper fixture installation and aiming. In the last few years, we have gained two new very significant dark sky places in San Diego County — the community of Julian and Anza Borrego State Park — but our public lighting policies need to catch up with the times. Let’s set our course to reclaim our nighttime environment for ourselves and future generations. Updating our ordinances, and using dark sky friendly streetlighting — such as has been done by the initiative of some San Diego neighborhoods, such as Pacific Beach residential areas — is a good start. Some of our current street lighting systems were replaced more than 10 years ago and will need replacement soon. We should review the design choices made then and update. We should research what other cities are doing and use that input to improve our lighting. Some are using much lower color temperatures. The original county ordinance had a 15-mile radius around both Palomar and Laguna observatories to shield them from direct adjacent lighting. Special narrow band lighting limited spectral impact to the observatories. This requirement has not been converted to an equivalent LED source such as narrow band amber and some full spectrum LEDs have been installed, which is impacting our observatories. As residents and business owners, we can do much ourselves. Keep lighting around our homes low in wattage and color temperature. Pick fixtures that shine the light down and keep the light on your property. Use uplight-type landscape lighting sparingly and only enough to achieve the effect that you want. In some areas of the county nearer the observatories and in San Diego’s two Dark Sky Communities, uplighting is typically prohibited. Good lighting is neighbor-friendly, wildlife-friendly, and it can save money and energy, helping to protect our planet! I recently had someone tell me “I find myself looking up at the stars more these days. It’s a gift.” I couldn’t have said it better. Let’s do what we can to protect our neighborhoods and skies. If you want to learn more about good nighttime lighting, visit Dark Sky International’s web page at darksky.org . For what we are doing here in San Diego, go to our local Dark Sky San Diego County web page at darkskysandiego.org . We have two International Dark Sky Communities, Julian and Borrego Springs, and one Dark Sky Park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Visit them and enjoy the night sky! If you are interested in the partial solar eclipse that is occurring Monday, there are three locations that you can go to safely view the eclipse: the Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park, the Mission Trails Visitor Center and the Julian County Library.