Do bright LED street lights belong in heritage towns?
The downtown of Lunenburg, N.S., has held on to much of its old-time magic of brightly painted businesses lining narrow streets that have changed little since the 1700s.
But there is one glaring difference from the days of yore that's not sitting well with resident Anke Holm.
She's worried about the growing number of LED street lights in Old Town Lunenburg, which she said cast a harsh, bluish light and ruin the ambience of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In a presentation to town council last month, Holm asked officials to choose LEDs with a softer, yellow glow that have a colour temperature less than 3,000K (kelvins).
"It's very bright. It looks like a sore thumb," said Holm. "They are very visible because it just doesn't fit. There's no uniformity anymore."
She pointed to a report prepared by UNESCO in 2015 about lighting historic sites that suggested using LEDs with very low colour temperatures.
Lunenburg, like every municipality in Nova Scotia, is required to change its street lights to the more energy-efficient LEDs by the end of 2022. But it's a move that's run into opposition from some Nova Scotians who say it's turning their neighbourhoods into Walmart parking lots.
Lunenburg Mayor Rachel Bailey said council has taken Holm's presentation into consideration and has asked staff to prepare a report on the issue.
She said at this point, LEDs have been installed as old lights burn out, so she didn't know how many are in the town, where they're located or if they're all above 4,000K of colour temperature.
"I think ambiance is perhaps a bit subjective," said Bailey. "You know, there's different colours to light so they make a different impression on people."
Bailey said as far as the town is concerned, it's not breaking any UNESCO guidelines.
"It's certainly not something that I found to be a striking concern by any stretch," she said.
Sandy Marshall lives across the street from where one of the first LED street lights in Lunenburg was installed about five years ago. He said it's really bright, but he's gotten used to it even though he has to close his blinds tightly at night.
What concerns him is the amount of light pollution that obscures the night sky.
"There's too much light, and if there's a chance to redirect it or direct it down or be serious about how to control it … then it's a chance to make a difference," said Marshall.
A report by an international group of researchers recently found that the use of LEDs is actually leading to more light pollution in countries like Canada because cheaper lighting means more of it.
While Holm has many concerns about the harsh 4,000K LEDs — including the potential impact on people's health as outlined by the American Medical Association — she mostly wants "to keep Lunenburg beautiful as much as by day as by night."
"The town really could be a pioneer in doing the right thing here," she said.
