Opponents of a what’s been called a “rural lights out” or “dark sky”

ordinance packed Thursday night’s Baker County Planning Commission

meeting to testify and urge the commission to drop it from from a

proposed revision of the county’s subdivision ordinance.

After listening to dozens of farmers, ranchers and other opponents

of the ordinance, and two people who saw some merit in it, the planning

commission voted unanimously to delete the proposed ordinance from

consideration.

Public hearing testimony that convinced commissioners to take that action started with Mac Kerns, who farms in northern Baker Valley near Haines describing how restrictions on use of night lights around his family’s farm would disrupt essential night work this time of year during potato harvest.

Kerns was followed by testimony from ranchers Dan and Renece Forsea of Richland; Clair Pickard who ranches in the Keating Valley; Roy Anderson, who ranches just north of Baker City near the gun club; Gordon, Derrick and Connie Colton, who ranch near North Powder and others who expressed concerns about how restrictions on night lights in rural areas would inhibit their ability to make emergency equipment repairs at night, to complete night harvesting required at times to get the job done ahead of inclement weather or to meet packer or processor schedules, to monitor livestock, watch for predators or to discourage criminals from coming around after dark.

Several also questioned the legality, enforceability and authority of the planning commission or the county to impose the type of restrictions on lighting contained in the ordinance.

“I really don’t think this is county business. I really think you have stepped over your bounds here,” said Pickard.

“We feel it is basically a ridiculous ordinance for Baker County,” said Dan Forsea, Baker County Livestock Association president.

Forsea said he thought the time and money the county would wind up wasting enacting and enforcing a “dark sky” ordinance could be better spent fixing infrastructure and pursuing real criminals.

When Bill Harvey of the planning commission asked Forsea if he thought there was still plenty of open space where people could go to look at the stars at night, Forsea said yes, adding that he had just come down from herding cattle on a mountain where the stars shown so bright and close in the night sky that it looked like “you really could reach out and touch them.”

The proposed ordinance was submitted to the planning commission by Paul Wares, the son of an astronomer. The document states, “The rural living experience shouldn’t end each evening when the sun goes down. Unregulated outdoor lighting in our area has degraded one of the valuable amenities of Baker County.”

The document goes on to say that the purpose of the ordinance is to establish outdoor lighting standards that reduce the impacts of glare, light trespass, over lighting, disruption of migratory patterns of birds, and poorly shielded or inappropriately directed lighting fixtures, and to promote safety and encourage energy conservation.”

Baker City residents Gary Dielman and Susan Moses presented testimony somewhat supportive of the proposed ordinance.

Dielman started by saying that since he was “not absolutely opposed to the ordinance,” he had to work up some courage to testify in a room full of his neighbors, ranchers he knows and others who had testified ahead of him in opposition to the bill.

Dielman questioned whether ranchers really needed to keep mercury vapor lights or other bright lights on around their operations every night from sundown to sunup for safety, to work on equipment or to keep watch over their livestock, considering the fact that generations of farmers and ranchers before them managed prior to rural electrification when all they had were kerosene lamps.

He told how the glow of lights from Baker Valley interfered with his ability to view the stars and planets while camping at Twin Lakes, about 10 miles from the valley.

“I’m just wondering if both sides can’t be a win-win situation,” Dielman said.

Several people questioned a statement in the ordinance claiming that shading devices and limitations on mercury vapor lights and other bright types of exterior lights were needed in part to avoid disrupting nighttime bird migrations.

Moses said as many birds fly at night as in the daytime, including some migratory birds.

“There’s a whole flock of birds out there, and they need to be not confused by the lights,” Moses said.

Moses and Dielman asked the Planning Commission if there was any way the ordinance could be amended so that farmers, ranchers and others have the light they need, but possibly with some shades or other restrictions that would reduce the amount of light glowing upwards into the night sky, interfering with migratory birds or limiting the view of star gazers.

Commission Chairman Randy Joseph said he thought problems the ordinance might cause for farmers and ranchers have been overblown, and that amendments could be made to resolve any problems if the public was amenable.

However, after listening to all the public comments opposing the ordinance, Joseph said he thought that probably wasn’t in the cards.

Several local business owners, credit union representatives, an electrician and folks who described themselves as newcomers who came to Baker County to get away from big city life and excessive government regulation, also spoke against the proposed ordinance.

Deryl Leggett, who specializes in agriculture and business loans at Old West Federal Credit Union, said he was concerned that the proposed ordinance could have a disruptive effect on Baker County’s efforts to attract some new type of mills or other ventures capable of reviving the area’s timber or mining industries, as well as the region’s No. 1 industry – agriculture.

Rather than considering adding a “dark sky” ordinance that could pose problems for Baker County’s natural resource industries, Leggett suggested the planning commission would make better use of its time crafting a right-to-farm ordinance. Such an ordinance might be needed to keep newcomers from moving in and building homes next to farms or private woodlands, and them complaining about the dust, noise or smells generated by agriculture, timber or mining operations, Leggett said.

Kevin Culver, a local electrician, said he moved here from Portland partly to get away from intrusive government regulation, and from crime, which he said he knows from experience is discouraged by good outside lighting. Thieves targeted poorly lit homes in the rural area he lived in outside Portland, while skipping well-lit places in the same area, he said.

Besides that, Culver said an ordinance restricting mercury vapor lights and some others isn’t necessary because there’s greater choices nowadays as manufacturers are producing less-expensive, brighter and more efficient florescent lights that farmers, ranchers and others will likely move toward on their own, without being forced to under the proposed ordinance.

Longtime Baker-area residents, including Fred Warner Sr. and Byron Henry also came out to voice their opposition to the proposed “dark sky” ordinance.

“I hate to say this, but I think this is one of the dumbest things to come about,” said Warner.

Warner said he’s old enough to remember what it was like living on a ranch before electric service was extended to rural areas and he had to use kerosene lamps to see at night.

When the power company finally extended the electric lines one mile down the road to his family’s ranch, Warner said, “I turned the lights on and they’re still on.”

At 76, Henry said he’s seen such an onslaught of government regulations during his lifetime that he sometimes thinks he’d “be better off going to Russia to get away from all the regulations we have in Oregon and California.”

After the unanimous vote to delete the proposed ordinance, commissioners thanked the standing-room-only crowd of about 50 for participating. They asked those attending to stay involved as county officials work their way through the first review and rewrite since 1983 of the subdivision ordinance and other elements of county development standards.

“The lighting ordinance was just one part of this whole ordinance,” said Anna Sullivan of the planning commission. “We have some issues coming up as far as development on our resource lands.”