While it’s unlikely that Palo Alto residents will ever get to see the Milky Way outside their home on a clear night, environmentalists hope that the city’s new dark sky ordinance will make progress toward reducing light pollution to the benefit of both human and animal neighbors.

The City Council on Monday night passed an even stricter version of the ordinance than was suggested for consideration by city staff. The ordinance now moves the curfew on outdoor light from midnight to 11 p.m. and allows the law to broadly apply to new and replacement lighting regardless of whether the project requires a permit from the city. Council members also halved the runway for compliance of existing, adjustable light fixtures from two years to one.

Council member Greer Stone said the new policies balance public safety with being good stewards of the environment.”

“We’ve long prided ourselves as a city on environmental leadership and thoughtful urban design and deep commitment to public health and sustainability,” Stone said at the end of the long discussion. “Adopting a dark sky ordinance is just a natural extension of those values, and one that will benefit our residents, protect our natural environment and align our community with best practices that are already being implemented across California and the country.”

The ordinance as approved Monday night would require homes and businesses to reduce their outdoor light fixtures to the brightness of a 0.1-foot candle, where a one-foot candle produces enough light to illuminate a square foot of space with a lumen of light. The current law allows brightness up to a 0.5-foot candle. The 11 p.m. curfew will not apply to all outdoor lighting, and areas such as building entrances, parking lots and driveways are all exempt. Additionally, certain low-voltage lighting like holiday fixtures and uplighting to illuminate fountains or shrubbery are also exempt.

Environmental advocates from the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter and local high schools encouraged the council to amend the ordinance accordingly, arguing that the law would otherwise have no teeth. Dashiell Leeds, conservation coordinator at the Loma Prieta Chapter, said the stricter changes would improve sleep, reduce excess energy use and better align Palo Alto with neighboring jurisdictions that have similar laws on the books already. 

He urged the council to shift the curfew from midnight to 11 p.m. and to broaden the new lighting standards requirement for replacement lighting fixtures even if they don’t require a building permit. The council integrated these suggestions into its ordinance.

“Most new and replacement lighting is not going to be permitted,” Leeds said. “If the ordinance doesn’t cover those fixtures, then we’re frankly not improving the lighting situation in Palo alto over time.”

But now, city leaders may have to contend with a mountain of noncompliance complaints and subsequent lighting studies — a situation that City Manager Ed Shikada warned could quickly become “unmanageable” for city staff.

Some of the most vocal critics of the dark sky ordinance are homeowners along Edgewood Drive, who made the case to the council that there is little data on how the outdoor lighting restrictions would improve people’s sleep or protect wild animals. Daniel Hansen, who spoke on behalf of the Edgewood Neighborhood Alliance, also said the light reduction could encourage crime — a primary concern for residents whose backyards face the San Francisquito Creek, where many unhoused people live.

Hansen shows the council photos of people walking along the creek next to Edgewood Drive and encampments that had previously popped up in the area. He also pushed back against claims from DarkSky International, a national group, that ordinances like the one that the city is considering have health benefits.

“There’s a claim that people sleep better at night. In my experience, people sleep inside,” Hansen said. “You want dark, you pull the shade down.”

City staff say there is no one “high-crime” area in Palo Alto, but conceded to Edgewood residents’ concerns so far as to exempt many homes in that neighborhood from the dark sky ordinance entirely.

Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims was the sole dissent on the ordinance in large part because of this neighborhood exemption, which she argued “codified biases based on class and unhoused status.” She noted that Palo Alto police do not support the claim that the area sees more crime and criticized the council for “playing into unsubstantiated stereotypes.”  

“I find the Edgewood exemption deeply troubling,” Lythcott-Haims said.

Most Popular