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Bright night lights for Rappahannock County?
There are more than a few reasons why this county’s open-space, natural beauty and night-time darkness have been preserved. Undeniably some of the credit goes to those who have lived here before us. These forbears consistently took the long view over the short one – sacrificed short term advantage for long term value and delayed immediate gratification for enduring pleasure. Without their foresight much of this special place would long ago have been sub-divided, paved-over and illuminated all night long. It’s gently rolling farmland and forested ridges would have disappeared into the ever encroaching exurbia with its ubiquitous strip-malls, noise and non-stop traffic. Those of us who have chosen to reside in this county owe a huge debt of gratitude to the long-time, rooted citizenry who have prevented this apocalypse from happening here.
In the brief five years since I moved here and started reading the Rappahannock News I can recall stories about disagreements between neighbors over a single out-door light left on all night. Some may have found such stories simply humorous. I read them with great empathy. Here was a place where people had chosen to live – not just plopped down here by accident. Here was a place where old time families with deep Virginia roots had joined hands with newcomers who had sometimes traveled far and wide to find it. What these people shared was a deep appreciation for the land and the ways of the land. These news stories revealed more than parochial disputes and petty grievances. They revealed a people who recognized the privilege of living in a special place and who accepted the responsibility of protecting and preserving it for future generations.
In this present situation we’re not considering just one light, but a barrage of lights – not just at one location, but at multiple locations across the county.
How many of us have seen the actual outdoor stadium lighting in neighboring counties? The height of the steel poles ranges from forty to seventy feet. How many of these poles are required for a single playing field – four, six, twelve? Each pole can carry from six to twenty eight lamps on multilayered cross-bars. Each lamp uses 1000 to 1500 Watts of electricity and emits a high lumen output. Isn’t Rappahannock County the very same which has officially and strenuously opposed Dominion Power’s proposal to install high tension towers across its boundaries? Consider that Dominion’s towers, obtrusive and offensive as they are, are not lit up at night.
These playing field lights, if installed, will fundamentally and unalterably change the quality of life in Rappahannock County. It will constitute, in a single act, a significant leap into making Rappahannock County look just like everywhere else. The illuminations will be seen from miles away. The night sky in those areas near the playing fields will never be the same again. Why are we doing this?
The local proponents of night-games have repeatedly made the claim that every adjoining county has illuminated playing fields – as if that’s a reason for lighting ours. But if that’s the case, why the necessity for creating controversy and discord here? Nowhere in Rappahannock County is farther away than thirty minutes from another county’s fields. In short, how many illuminated playing fields do we need? If Warren, Page, Fauquier, Culpeper and Madison Counties have these facilities, isn’t that enough?
If Rappahannock residents don’t like what they see once these lights are up and running it will be exceedingly difficult to get them removed. And at what and who’s expense? Adding these lights will constitute a nearly irrevocable act. The damage will have been done and a terrible precedent set.
I realize that standing up to a powerful faraway corporation like Dominion Electric, hard as that is, does not risk offending well intentioned neighbors who in their eyes are just trying to give their kids more time on the grid-iron or the baseball diamond. But that’s exactly when more insight and courage is required from our elected representatives. Tall steel towers are intrusive, ugly and a scar upon the landscape whether they’re carrying high tension wires or high luminosity electric lights. And while Dominion’s towers would disappear into the nightscape, the playing field towers would go from being just plain eyesores by day to intrusive light polluters by night.
Student athletes are not frozen in time. They are not simply one dimensional beings, interested in only the one thing. They will soon grow into their maturity, experience widening horizons and new awareness, at which time they may not thank us for diminishing a lifetime of beauty and tranquility in Rappahannock County for a few hours of sports played under artificial lights – especially when these very same sports had been played just as well in natural light by their fathers and grandfathers – these same ancestors who left us Rappahannock County in the stunningly beautiful condition in which they found it.
Ronald F Maxwell
Flint Hill
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