Let there be light in downtown Middlebury

Author: Ceara Danaher

A new phase of the Middlebury Downtown Street Lighting plan is now being put into action as town employees strategically plan how best to light the downtown area. As a piece of the project, Court Square is soon to be filled with highly efficient, historically-styled streetlights.

"We've been replacing the lights in stages downtown," Town Manager Fred Dunnington said, noting that the project has been in the works for 10 or 15 years now. Dunnington is one of the key figures involved in the project, along with Middlebury's Streetlight Project Manager, Kathleen Ramsay and Project Engineer Charles Lane. As the project progresses, plans have been proposed in stages. The most recent designs were passed in a public hearing on Mar. 27.

The goal of installing new street lights is to increase visibility in Middlebury through the use of more efficient lighting. While the focus remains on pedestrian safety, particularly in the lighting of crosswalks, aesthetic and historical concerns also play a role. Many of the new lights have been designed in antiquated styles.

"The purpose of this," Dunnington said, "is to have a light that looks very similar to one that existed when street lighting was first installed in Middlebury."

Project Manager Kathleen Ramsay addressed the aesthetic ideal in part. "We'd like people to say, 'let's take an evening stroll in the downtown,'" she said.

The difference, however, is that within these classic New England exteriors are light bulbs that take advantage of modern technology. Both energy conservation and light pollution prevention are addressed in the structure of these new bulbs. The concern with light pollution comes from local stargazers and environmentalists.

Standing in defense of clear nighttime skies is Assistant Professor of Physics Frank Winkler.

"When most of us think of pollution, we picture tail pipes belching fumes or some kind of industrial waste of agricultural pollution," said Winkler. "But there are other kinds of assaults to our natural environment that we less often think of. Light and noise are two of them."

As an astronomer, Winkler is particular concerned about the effects of light pollution, which he defines as "ambient light directed up into the atmosphere that makes it much more difficult to see and appreciate the night sky."

Winkler fully appreciates the need for lighting, but is adamant that there are ways of maintaining light and reducing light pollution concurrently. He explained that a primary means of achieving this is through "full cut-off fixtures," where the actual bulb has a lamp that is creating illumination, "so that the light is directed down where you want it and not up into the sky."

Another benefit of full cut-off fixtures, Winkler said, is that they greatly reduce the glare that lights usually produce. The only way to directly look at this type of light is to stand immediately below it. "Even in a situation that's very well-lit, glare has the ability to blind pedestrians and motorists," Winkler said.

Certain segments of the project need to be performed as hybrid operations - installing some new lights and maintaining some old. The old lights are a project of the Central Vermont Public Service company (CVPS). These are the cobra-head lights usually seen on highways. The bulbs of such lights, Dunnington explains, are typically made with mercury vapors. Both the bulb and its fixture are much less efficient than modern lights, but some of these lights must remain in order to provide proper illumination in areas such as along Route 7.

The town of Middlebury's website says "eliminating these utility poles in these areas is financially restrictive, [but] the CVPS streetlights will be updated with cut-off-fixtures, similar to those on Court Street, which were replaced last year."

This structural change will, as Professor Winkler attested, redirect light distribution to minimize light pollution.

Funding for the project is presently being provided by the Federal Highway Administration's Transportation Enhancement Program, the State of Vermont's Downtown Transportation Fund Grant Program, and the town's Downtown Improvement District Taxes.