No doubt the disposition of human waste has been a problem since people first started living together in groups.

And while the dilemma has not been quite that protracted in Bluff, Utah, it sometimes seems so. For several decades, at least, residents and business people in the tiny town perched on the northern bank of the San Juan River have wrestled with treating their sewage in a safe yet affordable way, teetering on the edge of creating a public-health danger by relying solely on septic tanks and low-tech lagoons to process their waste even while some people have called for more modern and efficient methods.

Last month, the Recapture Lodge, a hotel that is one of Bluff’s largest businesses, was issued a notice of violation by the Utah Division of Water Quality for reported failures of its waste-disposal systems and the unauthorized discharge of wastewater and sludge into an unapproved lagoon system.

The development would appear to give weight to the arguments of those who say the town needs some sort of centralized sewage-treatment system. But efforts to come to an agreement on a community system appear to be in limbo at the moment.

According to a Sept. 10 letter to Recapture Lodge owner Jim Hook from Walter Baker, executive secretary for the Utah Water Quality Board, officials with the Division of Water Quality and San Juan County “conducted a site inspection of the wastewater treatment and disposal system and abandoned lagoon system” at the lodge on July 30 and found violations.

The notice of violation and compliance order gives Hook 30 days to respond in writing with a plan for resolving the problem, or face penalties.

Five violations of state law were listed: discharge of wastes “where there is probable cause to believe it will cause pollution…”; discharge without a permit; failure to notify the state of a discharge “which may cause the pollution of the waters of the state”; discharge of effluent from an onsite wastewater system onto the ground; and allowing a failing wastewater system to create or contribute to an unsanitary condition “which may involve a public health hazard. . .”

According to the notice of violation, an unauthorized, unlined three-cell municipal wastewater lagoon system has been on the property of Recapture Lodge since at least November 1967. In September 1996, DWQ issued Recapture a construction permit for a “large underground wastewater disposal system consisting of multiple septic tanks and a drainfield” to handle the wastewater from the 54-unit hotel and its laundry facility. One condition of the construction permit was that the old lagoon would be abandoned after the new system was placed in service.

The notice of violation states that Hook notified DWQ in November 1996 that the new underground disposal system was complete and in operation, and that the 4-inch discharge line to the old lagoon had been “permanently cemented shut.”

However, DWQ staff and officials with the county found during their inspection on July 30, 2009, that there were two 4-inch pipes leading to the northwest corner of the first lagoon cell and “a trickle of liquid” that “appeared to be wastewater” was flowing into the lagoon from one pipe.

Officials also found that the secondary clarifier at the wastewater-pretreatment site was “poorly maintained based on accumulations of sludge and the presence of weeds growing in the effluent launder.” The officials saw effluent flowing out of the clarifier into the wet well, the notice states.

“Upon returning to the lagoon, full pipe flow was observed entering the first lagoon from both of the 4-inch discharge pipes,” the notice states. Water was also seen overflowing into a second lagoon through a breach in the dike. After about a minute, the water turned into heavy sludge.

“Sludge discharges of the magnitude observed indicate grossly inadequate sludge wasting and performance monitoring practices by the facility,” the notice states.

“Failure to operate and monitor the pretreatment system at the Recapture Lodge in accordance with the basic principles and minimum industry standards. . . have resulted in the discharge of sludge into the large underground disposal system, which has plugged the drainfield causing a failure of the large underground disposal system.”

The notice says the unlawful discharge is believed to have occurred over an “extensive period of time.”

“Recapture Lodge installed an emergency overflow line to the abandoned lagoon system,” the notice states, and the resulting discharge of wastewater and sludge “is probable cause for degradation of the quality and beneficial uses of ground water.”

How serious?

Just how serious this degradation might be remains a large unknown.

State water engineer John Mackey, the project manager who is assisting the town in developing whatever sewer project may eventually be decided upon, said while he is not directly involved with groundwater issues or in writing such violations, the danger of groundwater contamination is undetermined at this point.

“Frankly, we don’t know,” Mackey said. “Nobody’s done a detailed study of that release — its impact on the shallow groundwater or its potential to reach the San Juan River.

“If your question is, ‘How bad is it?’, you know, it hasn’t been measured,” he said. “We suspect that it’s been going on for a long time.” But he said unless someone could supply a specific date when Recapture’s underground three-tank system failed and the sewage was diverted to the two abandoned lagoons, the extent of the problem will be difficult to assess.

“That would be important in being able to determine the overall impacts on groundwater,” he added. “That said, that’s a slow-moving acquifer — it’s very flat in that area and it’s a long way to the San Juan — the 6,000 gallons-aday maximum that could have been released from Recapture is infinitesimally small compared to the 700 cfs (cubic feet per second) that flows through the San Juan.”

Mackey said the risk of contamination of the San Juan is minimal also because most of the bacteria in the effluent would already be filtered out between the lagoon and the river.

Regardless of Bluff residents’ diametrically opposed views on the desirability of a public sewer system, Mackey said, no one wants to see Recapture Lodge driven out of business by draconian fines or cost-prohibitive requirements to set the problem right.

“Everybody loves Recapture Lodge — it’s famous, it’s got character and they have just struggled and struggled at getting a working solution for their wastewater,” he said.

For years the state and the county have pushed Bluff to get a centralized wastewater system, but many locals have resisted, arguing that the cost would be high and that there is little need in a town with a population of less than 400. But proponents say the system is needed because of Bluff’s proximity to the river and its soils, which are not ideal for handling septicsystem effluvia.

An underlying factor in the controversy is disagreement over the desirability of growth in the stunningly scenic, low-key berg. Obviously major commercial development, such as chain restaurants and motels, could be encouraged by the availability of a public sewage system.

“I don’t know if I’d call them the progrowth crowd, but there is a group that feels that what you really need to put in is a substantial system that is proven technology and long-lasting,” he said, “and as a state worker, I feel that’s our job — to have visions of improving communities and helping them not just survive, but thrive.”

Opposing a sewer system as a means of limiting growth is short-sighted, Mackey said, and there are better ways of controlling how a town develops.

“If the people of Bluff are concerned about how they grow — if they don’t want a McDonald’s or a chain motel or a chemical factory — then they have the wherewithal to do it,” he said. “If they really care about their town and the future of their town, then they should plan their town.

“Limiting your sanitation options just seems like a real poor mechanism for controlling growth.”

Little progress

But formal planning and growth control is difficult in a town that is not even incorporated.

Meanwhile, little progress toward a permanent solution to the town’s sewage concerns has been made since a May 2008 public meeting at which it appeared the Bluff Service Area Board, the local governing authority in the absence of a town government, would proceed with its “preferred option.”

That option was for a hybrid treatment system that involves placing septic tanks in front of users’ properties that are hooked up to a central treatment plant where the effluvia is run through a series of filters, leaving the water fit for underground drip irrigation but not for human contact. The system would have cost about $5 miliion, funded mostly by grants along with a $1.4 million loan that would have been repaid through user fees, ranging from $26 a month for a threebedroom house on up, according to usage and the size of the residence or business.

“We had moved forward to pick the preferred option,” said Skip Meier, who has the thankless task of chairing the service-area board and working to find a solution, “but then the state thought maybe we didn’t do things according to Hoyle, and they wanted us to certify it to satisfy the (Utah State) attorney general and that took about three or four months. After that passed, we got a petition from some of the residents of Bluff saying we shouldn’t do anything, and then the state said, ‘Maybe we should start thinking about this again . . .’

“So as a result we’re just about the same place where we were two years ago,” Meier said. He said that while he still prefers the hybrid system, the state wants Bluff to also consider the option of a “non-discharging lagoon with a conventional big-pipe sewer system.” Under this system, he explained, the raw sewage “wouldn’t be treated, it would just be exposed to the air.

“You just put the water in this basin, maintain levels about four to six feet and let it evaporate away, let the wind stir it up a little bit, let algae grow but not plants because they could pierce the bottom and then the water would drain into the ground.” He said other small southeastern Utah communities such as Mexican Hat and Montezuma Creek have this type of system.

Hook, who declined to be interviewed, is one of a sizable number of residents who have long opposed a centralized sewage-treatment system.

Another outspoken opponent is Eugene Foushee, who long ago owned Recapture. He wrote in an e-mail to service-area board members in March 2009 that he opposes the central system as “an inappropriate system fraught with expense, engineering, disruption and committing the Bluff community to an eternity of debt before Bluff has even become an incorporated town.”

Warring factions

Meier said there are three camps concerning sewage in Bluff, each comprising about a quarter of the population, “and the other 25 percent doesn’t care.”

“Bluff is Bluff and the factions [for and against a public sewage system] are very vocal and have sufficient numbers of followers to make it very difficult to get consensus.”

One anti-sewer group “thinks that it is anti-American to not take care of your own. They feel that the Bluff community is more than competent and qualified to maintain their own systems and people should pay their own way — they shouldn’t be getting large amounts of state and federal money.”

Another group also believes those residents who can take care of their own waste should be allowed to do so, he explained, but that a public system should be available for those who can’t because of their small lot sizes or other impediments. “They would like to see as many people as possible stay on their own systems and those who can’t become part of this collective. In other words, create a community-wide wastewater system for those who’ve got to have it and for all those who don’t need it, they can do whatever they want.”

Although this may sound reasonable, the result would be a town-wide public system with sewer pipes running right by properties with septic systems, and all residents would still foot the bill for the public system. “It would be a real nightmare to handle,” Meier said.

One group firmly supports the nondischarging lagoon system. “They say, ‘That’s what we want, period,” and maintain it is the only practical solution for a a small town.

“Other people say lagoons don’t work, they smell two or three times a year and that it’s going to be environmentally damaging and degrading to put in a big collection system.”

But the hybrid system also has vociferious opponents. “They say what is being proposed — the pack-bed media for treatment [the filtering technique] – is too complicated, will never work and will always be broken down.”

So at public meetings there’s often a majority that opposes whatever is suggested. “Fifty to 60 percent of the community gets together and shoots down whatever is proposed,” Meier said.

“We finally get something that seems like it will work and in the end we get community members writing petitions or demanding it go to a vote — they say, ‘I’m not getting what I want and I’m not going to settle for anything else, so I’m going to vote your choice down.”

Meier said the service-area board has no legislative or enforcement powers to take action concerning any sewage system that is malfunctioning. “And the county isn’t going to shut down a business because of a small problem like sewage leaking,” he said, “so then what do you do? You don’t do anything.”

Mackey said the state certainly hasn’t given up on helping Bluff find a solution. He said DWQ maintains a “project priority list” for all projects that may receive funding through the state revolving fund. Bluff has moved lower on this list because of new funding requests that have come in while Bluff has mulled a sewage system.

However, he wrote in an e-mail to the Free Press, “The change in Bluff’s position has nothing to do with changes in their need for a sewer or their need for funding. It has to do with competing needs of other communities that have joined Bluff in the funding queue.”

He added that Bluff has commissioned numerous studies dating back to at least 1977 to assess the need for a sewage-treatment system. “None of these studies have recommended the community take no action.”

A dog ordinance will have its day in November, when the Montezuma County commissioners will hold a public hearing on a proposal to amend and tighten the county’s existing law.

On Sept. 28, commissioners Gerald Koppenhafer and Steve Chappell (Larrie Rule was absent) agreed to set a hearing to discuss possible provisions in a stricter dog-control ordinance. They tentatively set the hearing for Monday, Nov. 23, at 9 a.m. in the county annex. Public notices with the time and date, as well as the complete draft ordinance, will be published in local papers.

Montezuma County is considering amending its laws to give officers more options for dealing with problem canines. Photo by Wendy Mimiaga

Sheriff Gerald Wallace and Undersheriff Dave Hart told the commissioners they would like to move toward a “care-and-control ordinance” rather than a simple vicious-dog ordinance, which is what the county now has.

Hart said he worked for a county in Missouri that had such an ordinance. The “care” portion addressed dogs that were malnourished or ill-treated or that barked constantly, while the “control” portion delineated when a dog that was off its own property was considered out of control.

The rough draft of the county’s proposed resolution, which would amend an existing resolution, addresses only control, however, not care.

A half-dozen people showed up for the discussion, and all seemed to be in favor of more regulation of roaming and barking dogs. But the commissioners and sheriff’s officers noted that regulating dog behavior can be a difficult and complex task.

“You don’t want to make the pendulum swing too far the other way,” Wallace said.

The draft ordinance is much narrower in scope than those in the audience would have liked; it does not regulate barking and does not require licensing.

Wallace said he envisions a complaint- driven ordinance that would cover situations such as dogs that repeatedly menace cyclists or joggers on county roads. “Right now there is nothing until the dog becomes vicious and bites someone,” he said, likening the system to “putting up a stop light after you have a lot of accidents.”

Montezuma County has one of the highest incidences of reported dog bites in Colorado, and there are also numerous complaints about dogs chasing and killing livestock. Nationwide, dogs kill more livestock than any other animal except coyotes, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics.

Dogs also cause traffic problems, Wallace said. “We have a number of accidents where dogs are out walking on the highway and people swerve to miss them,” he said.

Wallace said under current county law, there is little officers can do about a problem dog until it bites a person. “A vicious-dog ordinance works after the fact,” he said. “If there’s a way to deal with the problem so people don’t get bitten just walking down the road or riding their bike, you need to look at it.”

Owners of offending dogs would be contacted and asked to keep their dog from chasing people or causing other problems. If they didn’t comply, then they could be cited, and dogs not under control could be impounded. “This puts some teeth in the law,” Wallace said. “Now there’s no teeth. You say, ‘Please take care of your dog’ and they say, ‘Whatever’.”

The resolution as drafted provides for penalties of up to $1,000 in fines and/or up to 90 days of jail time for violations not involving bodily injury. Any offenses involving injury to a person by a dog are considered Class 2 misdemeanors and carry a separate set of penalties. The penalties are set by state law, not the county.

Hart said the county’s law would not be intended to crack down on dogs that are simply running loose. The city of Cortez has a dog-at-large ordinance and an animal-control officer that picks up roaming dogs, but the county would not do that. “I don’t think you want to become that stringent,” he said.

Wallace said the sheriff’s office has an agricultural officer who deals with complaints involving water disputes and livestock, and that individual could specialize in dog complaints as well. But any deputies would have the authority to respond to such complaints.

Hart said he knows the stricter law may not be entirely popular. “A lot of people in this community are used to having dogs running free, and they won’t want to see a change,” he said. “But we also get a lot of people asking us, ‘Why aren’t you doing something about this?’ ”

The officials generally agreed that regulating barking – something not called for in the draft resolution – would be difficult. “You cannot stop dogs from barking,” said Koppenhafer, who is a large-animal veterinarian. “What is the threshold for a complaint? Deer come into my yard and my dogs are going to bark.”

“If they’re barking during the day, that’s kind of life,” agreed Hart.

However, a woman in the audience disagreed, saying she had neighbors’ dogs barking around the clock. “The key words are ‘habitual’ and ‘persistent’,” she said, citing barking-dog ordinances from other places. “Why should we be penalized for living in the county?” She said she had called the county and was told her only option was to sue her neighbors.

“We’ve stayed awake many, many nights listening to dogs bark,” said another woman. “They never seem to bother the owners. When you have to get up at 5 a.m. to work, it’s hard.”

Hart said that, as current law is written, the problem of barking dogs in the county doesn’t even come under “disturbing the peace.”

A man in the audience said he and his wife can’t walk to their garage without a barrage of barking from the neighbors’ dogs. “It gets old,” he said. “What we’re finding here today is there’s no relief, and there’s really going to be no relief, for barking.”

Wallace said barking is a separate issue for another discussion.

The commissioners said they want to hear public input before deciding what the resolution will contain in the final version.

“We’re not going to reinvent the wheel, but we may add a few spokes,” Chappell quipped.

Is the controversial Desert Rock power plant down for the count?

Its backers say no, but environmentalists are ecstatic over the recent announcement that the Environmental Protection Agency will take a hard second look at the air-pollution permit it had issued in 2008 for the proposed 1,500-megawatt coal-fired plant. The plant, a project of Sithe Global and the Diné Power Authority of the Navajo Nation, is supposed to be built on reservation land 25 miles south of Farmington, N.M., but it has been struggling against delays and opposition.

A drag line scrapes the earth at the BHP Navajo Coal Mine in New Mexico. Opponents of the proposed Desert Rock power plant, which would be located not far from this mine, say there is already too much coal-related activity and pollution in the region to justify a third coal-fired power plant. Photo by Gail Binkly

A coalition of environmental groups had appealed the EPA’s issuance of the air-pollution permit, and in April 2009 the EPA itself asked to be allowed to remand and reconsider the permit.

In a decision Sept. 24, the Environmental Appeals Board, a panel that hears appeals of decisions by the EPA, decided to grant the EPA’s request. The Desert Rock permitting is being handled by the EPA’s Region 9 office San Francisco, which has some jurisdiction over proposals within the Navajo Nation.

“This validates the concerns people have had throughout our communities about adding a third power plant in the region,” said Mike Eisenfeld, an organizer with the San Juan Citizens Alliance in New Mexico. “The EPA themselves wanted this permit back and wanted to redo it.”

Desert Rock, Diné Power Authority, and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity had opposed the motion to remand the permit.

In its 83-page ruling, the appeals board found that the EPA had the right to ask to remand the permit and that the motion was not frivolous or made in bad faith.

The board said the EPA had valid concerns about issues with the permit, concerns shared by the appeals board.

An “overarching” concern, the board said, was the fact that the EPA had failed to consider making Desert Rock’s backers build a plant under a new technology called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), which captures carbon-dioxide emissions before they enter the atmosphere.

“. . .the Region abused its discretion in declining to consider [IGCC] as a potential control technology” in its analysis of the facility, the board said in its ruling.

In all likelihood, Desert Rock’s carbon- dioxide emissions — expected to be 10 million to 12 million tons per year – will have to be taken into account, Eisenfeld said.

“The wild card is carbon dioxide. All indications are it’s soon going to be regulated as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. You can’t just dismiss global warming in three paragraphs in your EIS.”

The EPA will also have to take a closer look at how Desert Rock’s emissions would add to the levels of mercury, ozone precursors and particulates in the air, Eisenfeld said. Desert Rock would be much cleaner than existing power plants in ther region, but would still release about 3,500 tons of sulfur dioxide, 3,500 tons of nitrogen oxide, and 120 pounds of mercury into the air.

“One of the issues we raised is the fact that we are on the cusp of being out of attainment [with federal standards] on ozone” in the Four Corners region, he said.

Mercury is also a special concern in the area. Numerous bodies of water around the region carry warnings about mercury-contaminated fish, including Totten and Narraguinnep reservoirs in Montezuma County and Vallecito Lake in La Plata County, and levels of airborne mercury detected at a monitor at Mesa Verde National Park are very high.

Furthermore, the EPA this time around will require endangeredspecies consultations that had been ignored by the project’s proponents during the first permitting process, Eisenfeld said.

Normally, the EPA would have required endangered-species consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Eisenfeld said, but Sithe and DPA deferred that consultation, saying it was something the Bureau of Indian Affairs would do during its own permitting process for Desert Rock.

“But we said, ‘You have a distinct permit and have to do that yourselves’,” Eisenfeld said.

Endangered species in the region that could be affected by increased pollution from Desert Rock include the Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker, two types of warmwater fish, as well as the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird.

In its ruling, the appeals board said the Fish and Wildlife Service had informed EPA’s Region 9 that “its own analysis has led it to determine that mercury emissions may be adversely affecting the endangered Colorado pikeminnow, as well as contributing to numerous fish consumption advisories in the Four Corners area.”

Eisenfeld said the impacts to endangered species have broader implications.

“I don’t think it’s as important to focus just on the endangered species, but the fact that all these pollutants are going into the river systems and the food chain and our soils is indicative of something bigger,” he said. “This is one of about 50 issues these guys need to grapple with. I don’t think much thought was given to the permitting process. They thought it was just a formality.”

Eisenfeld said the appeal’s board’s ruling was highly significant. “This is an indication that we have a different EPA now that’s going to be looking at the science behind these proposals, and that’s what we’ve been asking for all along.”

Desert Rock has been touted by Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. as a source of good jobs for the impoverished nation; it would provide an estimated 1,000 jobs during construction and 200 permanent jobs afterward. It has been opposed, however, by a broad coalition of environmental groups, including SJCA, EarthJustice, Environmental Defense Fund, Grand Canyon Trust, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and the grassroots Diné CARE, which has urged Navajo leaders to look to renewable energy for economic development.

Desert Rock would release much less pollution than the old, existing power plants in the vicinity – the Four Corners Power Plant on the Navajo Reservation, and the San Juan Generating Station near Waterflow, N.M. But Eisenfeld said it would exacerbate existing problems with air quality.

“We focused early on on the fact that Desert Rock is not being proposed in a vacuum. This area has a massive coal complex – three coal mines, two major, major coal-fired power plants, and significant water use coming out of the San Juan River for those projects. We said, ‘You can’t look at Desert Rock without contextualizing it with the other plants.’

“We said early on, during the scoping in 2004, that if Desert Rock were tied in with closing one of the existing facilities,” this could be a benefit, he said. “But to just throw a third plant out there is a fatal flaw.”

Eisenfeld also noted that none of the electricity generated by Desert Rock is slated to be used in the Four Corners. Instead, it will go to markets such as Phoenix, Tucson and Las Vegas. “I don’t think we should be depended upon to provide electricity for Tucson. They should require the large-scale power plants to be built closer to the market. I’m tired of us being treated like an energy-export zone with no evaluations of the consequences to us.”

Desert Rock still faces a plethora of hurdles, including numerous other permits it must obtain.

“The whole reason this permit was so important is because that was the one they needed to start marketing and get contracts for the power,” he said.

“I think this is a huge legal precedent for any plant that’s going to be proposed. They will have to look at the permitting process and the costs they are going to incur. Coal has become a very expensive way to produce electricity.”

Eisenfeld said he hopes this will push people in the region to look into renewable energy. “I hope leaders around here, be it Montezuma County or the Navajo Nation or the Farmington City Council ,will have a little different vision of what we can do.”

The national parks in the Four Corners area, known for their stark and rugged beauty by day, offer another kind of beauty at night.

A number of parks in the region offer star-gazing and astronomical programs to take advantage of the relatively unpolluted night skies. But of all the area’s parks, the darkest of the dark, at least officially, is Natural Bridges National Monument, which in 2007 became the world’s first International Dark Sky Park, a designation granted by the International Dark- Sky Association (IDA).

The night sky as seen from Owachomo Bridge in Utah’s Natural Bridges National Monument, which became the world’s first International Dark-Sky Park in 2007. Photo courtesy of National Park Service

The distinction is beginning to be known by more and more visitors, according to Scott Ryan, chief ranger for Natural Bridges and Hovenweep national monuments.

“We are starting to get a significant fraction of the people coming to this park already advising they knew about the dark skies or calling to inquire about it. I’d say probably 20 percent are aware of our status as a dark-sky park.”

The monument’s previous chief ranger, Ralph Jones, was instrumental in obtaining the designation, going to Tucson to work with the IDA, Ryan said.

Parks must apply for the status and have to meet three criteria. First, “You have to have a good dark sky,” Ryan said. IDA members utilize a meter that measures ambient light. Natural Bridges was found to be a 2 on the “Bortle Class 2” scale, which ranges from 1 to 10, with 1 being the darkest and 10 having the most light pollution.

However, national parks don’t have to be absolutely dark in order to receive a listing.

“The very second International Dark- Sky Park named was Cherry Springs in Pocono, Pa.,” Ryan said. “It did not get a rating of 2, but they have several tiers of darkness so they can also promote preservation of relatively dark skies even on the East Coast, rather than just giving up on them.

“You need to have some nice darksky places back East as well. They want to encourage preservation for various stages of dark skies.”

In addition to having relatively unpolluted night skies, a potential dark-sky park must agree to retrofit its lighting to be more sky-friendly. The bulbs must be shielded, pointed down and only as bright as minimally necessary.

This proved to be little problem for Natural Bridges, Ryan said. “We’re a very small park, so there were not that many lights to retrofit.” Most of the outdoor fixtures now contain 13-watt compact fluorescent light bulbs and prevent stray light from interfering with the starry vistas.

Parks also must make a commitment to put on astronomical programs. Natural Bridges offers an astronomy program Friday and Saturday nights throughout the summer, continuing until the end of October. The program features a ranger talk and the opportunity to view through a telescope the features of the sky that interest the audience, whether bright stars, planets, binary stars, or nebulae.

“Different stars have different colors, depending on their size and heat, so people can get a glimpse of the different- colored stars that way,” he said.

Not every park in the Four Corners would qualify. Grand Canyon National Park has fairly dark skies and does offer astronomy presentations, “but it would be a tremendous expense for them to retrofit all the lights along the South Rim,” Ryan explained.

Natural Bridges, Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon are reportedly the darkest spots in the state of Utah. Bryce Canyon has offered astronomical presentations for many years — “they are pretty much the standard for all of us trying to get our programs up to speed,” Ryan said.

Astronomy presentations are also offered at Capitol Reef, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and the Island in the Sky area of Canyonlands National Park. However, even these sites don’t offer the darkness of Natural Bridges. Bryce has a dim glow on the horizon from the town of Panguitch, and Island in the Sky is seeing some light pollution from the rapidly growing town of Moab.

In contrast, Natural Bridges is fortunate “to be surrounded by all this BLM and Forest Service land that won’t be developed for a long, long, long time, if ever,” Ryan said.

Hovenweep National Monument, while quite remote and dark, devotes its resources to preserving and promoting its ancient Puebloan sites rather than its night skies.

Still, officials across the national-park system in general are becoming more and more conscious of their skies as a resource. The National Park Service has been working with the IDA to protect dark vistas whenever possible.

“There have been advocates of dark sky preservation in the Park Service to the point where we have dark skies in many of our management plans,” Ryan said.

“At our regional office in Denver, there is a dark-sky contingent that is assisting parks in developing astronomy programs.”

Advocates offer a clearinghouse of astronomers, both professional and amateur, willing to help parks with presentations.

Two highly qualified volunteer astronomers came to Natural Bridges to give night talks, and one is working on a video showcasing the monument’s night skies, Ryan said.

“We’ve also been fortunate this year to have a seasonal ranger who is a devoted amateur astronomer,” he said. The park is seeking additional funding to have an astronomer on staff year-round.

Ryan said visitors who attend the night-time programs greatly enjoy them. “We get a fair amount of people from the Four Corners who are used to dark skies, but we also have folks from the crowded seaboard or big cities, and they are just awed by the vividness of the dark sky we have.”

The sight of the Milky Way as a “river of light,” as one Natural Bridges press release called it, is particularly amazing to some visitors.

The majority of people in the United States cannot see the Milky Way outside their homes because of light pollution, and a sizable number have never seen it in their lives, Ryan said.

“They come here and they are just blown away.”

He added, “There’s an anecdote used by a lot of astronomers, about a massive power outage in the L.A. area [after an earthquake in 1994], when people were seeing the night sky for the first time in their lives. Many people called 911 to report a mysterious linear light streak in the sky — they didn’t know it was the Milky Way.”

Ryan said he has heard no negative comments about the new sky-friendly lighting or the darkness in general at Natural Bridges.

“There are certainly people who don’t like the dark, whether they’re afraid of the dark or just agitated because they can’t see everything, but I haven’t heard any complaints from people wanting us to put brighter lights up,” he said.

“People coming here know they are coming to a remote area and are looking for a pure, natural experience.”

Natural Bridges, located some 35 miles west of Blanding, Utah, is indeed off the beaten path, but its visitation is about 95,000 a year and climbing. This may be partly attributable to its status as a dark-sky park, something that is promoted at visitors centers in Monticello and Blanding as well as on the park service’s web site.

Ryan said a representative of the Japanese tourism industry stationed in Salt Lake City attended one of the night programs at Natural Bridges and is now promoting the night-sky resources of the Four Corners area to Japan.

“I think we’re getting on the map,” Ryan said.

Ryan, who came to Natural Bridges a year and a half ago after working many years at other Four Corners parks including Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon, said he never tires of seeing the stars himself.

“It’s always spectacular to be able to take a walk at night around here and see a whole extra aspect of your world that you just don’t get during the day,” he said. “It’s amazing to look up and feel that connection to the whole universe.”

“If stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore. . . But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Driving into a big city at night is like driving into a sunrise. The glow can be seen for miles, growing brighter and brighter until it is all-encompassing and the dark is eradicated.

In the Four Corners, the night sky – with all the wonders that Emerson praised – is still visible, most of its stunning features intact. But how long will that last? Should dark night skies be preserved? And if so, how?

Photo by Susan Matteson

The issue of dark skies – once something that only astronomers cared about – is gaining attention worldwide. National Geographic featured it on its cover in November 2008. Cities scattered around the globe are adopting regulations to preserve some natural darkness.

And, locally, “dark skies” popped up as an attribute worth preserving about Montezuma County at every one of the county’s four recent workshops on comprehensive planning.

Greg Kemp, a member of Montezuma Vision Project, a grassroots group that advocates more land-use planning, said he, Southwest Colorado Greens chair Jim Skvorc, and others recently approached the planning commission about implementing lighting regulations, but the board felt the issue was too complex to tackle at this time.

Kemp said MVP is not pushing for stricter regulation of lighting, but believes it is a topic of interest and wants to provide citizens with information so they can decide whether to support it.

Kemp himself would like to see dark skies preserved. “In my opinion it’s really a pretty simple thing to do,” he said. “If people feel they need security lighting, there is a wide array of fixtures available that don’t cast a wide glare and also tend to be more energyefficient. The light output is lower, but it’s adequate.

“I think it’s something people should consider in any new houses or any housing upgrades. It’s very easy to do and it can be done without compromising security in any way whatsoever.”

Harmful to health?

The push for dark-sky preservation was initially motivated largely by people’s desire to continue beholding the beauties of stars, nebulae, and planets. For years astronomers have decried the growing sky haze that has obscured their observations. In 1958, the city of Flagstaff, Ariz., adopted an ordinance to reduce advertising lights in order to help keep nearby Lowell Observatory viable. In 2001, Flagstaff was named the first International Dark-Sky City by the nonprofit International Dark-Sky Association (IDA); Flagstaff has its own chapter of the IDA and a campaign called “Stars Up/Lights Down.”

But more recently, the call for lessintrusive lighting and more natural skies has been bolstered by biologists’ reports that artificial lighting may be harmful to the health of wild animals and humans alike.

Insects, birds and bats are often powerfully drawn to light; artificial sources may hamper their normal navigation, migration, feeding, and reproduction. For instance, endangered sea turtles nest on dark beaches and their hatchlings instinctively move toward the relatively light ocean when they emerge from their shells. Nowadays, the baby turtles often head inland instead toward artificially shining cities – and die.

Round-the-clock lighting is even believed to depress the formation of chlorophyll in leaves and increase algae growth in ponds, according to the IDA (www.darksky.org).

Today, two-thirds of the people in the United States and half of those in European cannot see the Milky Way where they live, according to a 2001 report by the Royal Astronomical Society. As we turn night into day through bright lights and intrusive noises, people find themselves out of synch with their natural biorhythms and may have difficulty sleeping and staying healthy.

Different researchers have found indications that artificial light at night reduces people’s production of melatonin, a hormone critical for many functions including a properly working immune system. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute in England reported that night-shift workers are 60 percent more likely to develop breast cancer.

In June, the American Medical Association adopted a powerfully worded resolution advocating stronger light-pollution-control efforts.

The AMA argued that light pollution is a waste of energy, a source of carbon dioxide that may contribute to global warming, and a safety hazard for older people whose visibility is affected by glare at night. Also, the AMA said, “Light trespass has been implicated in disruption of the human and animal circadian rhythm, and strongly suspected as an etiology of suppressed melatonin production, depressed immune systems, and increase in cancer rates such as breast cancers.”

It also “disrupts nocturnal animal activity” and may diminish the populations of many animals, the AMA said.

Simple solutions

The irony is that, in many cases, retaining dark skies is possible without losing visibility and security. Simple technologies such as lights activated by motion sensors and lights that shine downward rather than in a glowing globe can greatly reduce light pollution.

Empire Electric Association, a rural electric co-op that serves Southwest Colorado and San Juan County in Utah, has implemented a dark-sky initiative for street lights. Whenever a fixture needs repairing or even when a bulb must be replaced, Empire workers replace the entire old “cobra-head” fixture with cutoff-lens street lighting, said Doug Sparks, member-services manager for Empire.

“The light is cut off at a prescribed angle,” Sparks said. “You could take a pencil and draw a line around the light, as opposed to a dispersed light.

“That’s what it’s all about, not allowing the light to go up, only to come down.”

Empire has adopted the policy throughout its system and in its franchise agreement with the city of Cortez, he said. The goal is to have all the lights replaced within the next few years.

“The trend is toward more dark sky,” Sparks said. “The technology is coming along.” The next wave of change will probably be the implementation of LED lights, which are much more energy- efficient than the old fixtures, he said, but they remain too expensive for Empire to utilize now.

Sparks said the cutoff lighting does not shine straight down, but at an angle of 35 or 40 degrees from horizontal. It does result in a minute loss in lighting on the street, he said.

“We bought several different styles and let the city [of Cortez] decide what they could live with,” he said. “You now have a distinct dark line you step into.” But the lights are designed so the lighted areas overlap “So far there haven’t been any complaints and no safety issues at the intersections.”

The adoption of more dark-skyfriendly street lighting seems like a nobrainer, but Sparks said there have been people who objected to it in other places. “Historical societies don’t want modern lighting,” particularly in historically-oriented towns, he said. “They want the big old lamp posts that were designed for gas-powered light. When you make the lights more subdued and more efficient, they have a very modern look.”

Still, Empire is committed to replacing its street lights to decrease light pollution. “It was a corporate decision about five years ago to lean in that direction,” Sparks said.

An issue to be dealt with

MVP’s Kemp said he would like to see Montezuma County and its municipalities adopt regulations requiring dark-sky-friendly residential and security lighting in addition to street lighting, but he knows there may be obstacles. For instance, he said he’s been told that it’s very difficult to objectively measure light output because of reflected light from vehicles, wet pavement, snow and other factors.

But he believes the issue is worth pursuing. “People around here tend to take the night sky for granted, but when you talk to people from metropolitan areas, they are just in awe at what we have.”

Montezuma County has received only two complaints specifically about lighting this year, according to Planning Director Susan Carver.

Jon Callender, chair of the Montezuma County planning commission, said lighting comes up whenever the group mulls applications for commercial or industrial activities. “Lighting is one of the things we often talk about, particularly when the facility is going to be in a site that was not commercial or not developed that much previously, because the neighbors are used to a much darker environment.

“If you build a storage unit in the middle of a black space, every single neighbor is going to be concerned. But I don’t know how you stop it. Can you even regulate it, and do you want to?”

Still, aesthetics in general are a topic that will have to be dealt with, Callender believes. “One of the things identified in the original county comprehensive plan was the issue of visual blight, and we never really dealt with that, whether lighting or junk or poorly kept-up properties,” he said. “But it’s a difficult issue and one this county is sensitive to because we don’t want to interfere with people’s private property rights.”

In the past few months, Callender has led four meetings around the county to gather input on whether the comprehensive plan should be revised. With the exception of the meeting in Mancos, the workshops were lightly attended. However, “dark skies” were mentioned at every meeting as something worth preserving in the county.

“My take is, it’s an issue we have to deal with, but not the top issue,” Callender said.

“This is a gross oversimplification, but basically there are two kinds of people in the county. One is people who see light as an indication of growth and positive economic development. The other is those who see it as an intrusion into what would be a much more bucolic and rural environment.

“The latter see light as a measure of ever-increasing population and development pressure. There is a strong and articulate group who believe this is one of the markers for many things they are concerned about.”

Callender noted that new technology is making it much easier for people to have both dark skies and well-lighted areas on the ground. “I think what we’re going to move toward is, first, public discussion of these things at a higher level than we have in the past, and second, some sort of plan by which we stimulate people to adopt those types of technologies, whether we regulate it or not,” he said. “Fairness and self-regulation can often be a very effective way to reduce and mitigate these kinds of problems. This county is not inclined to over-regulate things.”

The planning commission will at some time have a workshop to consider changing and strengthening lighting regulations in the land-use code, Callender said. “We definitely as a planning commission are going to consider some sort of lighting issues.”

But he does not want to see the county go overboard in adopting rules to limit people’s lighting options, warning that they could have unintended consequences. It would be better if people simply chose to use lighting that serves their purposes but preserves dark skies.

“Maybe it’s better for us to all work together because we believe it would be beautiful to have dark skies around here,” he said. “We can think about that any time we screw in a light bulb. I think that would be excellent.”