Feature

Outdoor lights obscure dark skies, waste energy and throw off the rhythms of all types of life. Here’s what advocates are doing to protect Central Oregon’s vast dark skies.

By Hanna Merzbach

Amid a shield of darkness, under a sea of glittering stars at Sunriver’s observatory, children gaze at Saturn for the first time. Visitors peer through telescopes at the moon’s miles-long craters and marvel at the wonders of the Milky Way.

But, as visitors look to the north, a cloud of orange sky glows over Bend, as light escapes into the atmosphere overhead. This is one visible sign of the city’s growing light pollution problem.

“We call it the ‘arouri Bend-ialis,’” joked Bob Grossfeld, who’s managed the observatory for over 20 years.

As the sky grows brighter in Bend and throughout Deschutes County with the booming population, advocates are pushing residents and local officials to protect the dark skies through special designations, stricter lighting policies and educational campaigns.

Outdoor lights — that emit too much light, use blue wavelengths or shine up and out — not only obscure the stars, but they also disrupt the cycles of all kinds of life. Lights glowing into the night throw off humans’ circadian rhythm and suppress the production of melatonin. They can also make trees grow unevenly and disorient birds migrating at night.

That’s all in addition to the enormous energy cost: the Phoenix-based International Dark Sky Association estimates that at least 30% of all outdoor lighting in the U.S. is wasted, largely with unshielded lights. That adds up to $3.3 billion a year and the release of 21 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Forming Dark Sky Places

Bend accounts for nearly half of the light pollution in Deschutes County, according to analyses from the IDA’s Oregon chapter. In just 10 years, between 2010 and 2020, the number of upward lights grew by almost 12% in Bend, and 20% in Redmond.

But the increase was most stark outside city limits in Deschutes County’s unincorporated areas, where the number of upward lights doubled, now making up almost one-third of all light escaping into space in the county.

The community of Sunriver, on the other hand, saw its light pollution levels get even lower, as the IDA designated it Oregon’s first official Dark Sky Place in 2020. Sunriver — home to the largest publicly accessible observatory in the country — is one of 195 Dark Sky Places around the world, as of January 2022. It’s also now even more of a destination for the growing population of “astrotourists,” or visitors who travel in search of dark skies.

While giving a tour of the observatory’s ever-expanding facility, Grossfeld said, “Sunriver cheated,” explaining that the resort town had been enforcing strict lighting policies since the 1960s, thanks to an active homeowners’ association. While many communities must overhaul their entire lighting system and go through a rigorous application process to get a dark sky designation, Sunriver just had to check a few boxes.

“Part of (Sunriver’s) development was all about keeping lights pointing down and covered and the natural beauty of the world,” Grossfeld added.

Oregon’s other newly minted dark sky place, Prineville Reservoir State Park, benefits from being 16 miles up a dead-end road, according to Chris Gerdes, the park’s manager.

Light pollution is minimal because “we’re really at the end of the line,” Gerdes said of the park, which offers special stargazing permits and seasonal telescopes to nighttime viewers.

Prineville acts as a gateway to the Oregon Outback, which—nestled between Bend, Burns and Boise—is part of the largest swath of dark sky in the lower 48. As light pollution from growing populations encroaches into the pristine sky area, advocates are seeking to gain community support for making the area a Dark Sky Sanctuary, the IDA’s highest accolade.

In Central Oregon, advocates from Black Butte Ranch and Pine Mountain Observatory are also working toward becoming dark sky places. And across the state, Cottonwood State Park, Wallowa Lake State Park and Oregon Caves National Monument & Preserve are in different stages of the application process.

Other communities in Oregon have a long way to go to bring their skies up to par: Keeping light pollution to a minimum is simple when a place is completely isolated like Prineville Reservoir or has a homeowners’ association like Sunriver’s enforcing strict lighting policies, but it’s a bit more complicated for the rest of Deschutes County, where enforcement is largely complaint-driven.

Photos Courtesy of Grant Tandy

The Hopservatory offers an accessible, in-town option for star-gazers.

“It’s the easiest form of pollution to solve because you can literally just turn off a light.”

—GRANT TANDY, HOPSERVATORY MANAGER