Open house to show Heberites how to reduce light pollution

This year, three Wasatch High School students have taken on a project entitled "Heber Valley Dark Sky Initiative." They said they are striving to become the "central hub of all things dark sky in the Heber Valley."

The students are hosting an open house Thursday as part of the effort to spread awareness about ways to keep the night sky dark above Heber City and Wasatch County.

The project started as a request from Heber City, which works regularly with high school students on projects that impact the community. It's done through the Center for Advanced Professional Studies program which connects students with opportunities through local businesses, governments and industry mentors.

On the heels of Heber City and Wasatch County creating new rules to curb light pollution, they want to show residents how they can limit the amount of light they send into the sky.

"The most effective way now to reduce light pollution is through citizen participation," CAPS Dark Sky Team student Eli Gordon said. "We are focusing on what citizens can do to reduce their own light pollution footprint. The aim of our open house is to spread as much valuable information as possible."

Gordon said people in the Heber area can help in three main ways: using low-kelvin lights, installing full-cutoff light fixtures and turning off external lights at 10 p.m. or when they go to bed.

Gordon, along with students Polly Fotheringham and Emma Anthony, plan to send fliers to Heber homes and educate consumers by placing indicators next to dark sky-compliant lights in a hardware store in town.

Weston Broadbent is the director of Wasatch High School CAPS. He said this effort makes for strong professional experience because the students are working to create solutions important to their communities.

"Their involvement has ranged from going to meetings, to designing stickers that they just got approved at ACE Hardware that will say ‘Heber Valley dark sky approved,’" Broadbent said. "They have been researching what it means to be dark sky approved, and how that helps or doesn't help and, and ways we can do it that would work in our valley."

The Thursday event is from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in front of Heber City Hall at 75 North Main Street.

City Manager Matt Brower will also be there to answer residents’ questions about the city government's 2021 dark sky ordinance and other measures it's taken.

Plus, there’ll be food trucks, free light bulbs, a campfire and maybe even a telescope.

Heber City last updated city-wide dark sky rules in August 2021, and Wasatch County also just updated its ordinance on April 20, 2023.