Heber City suggests uniform dark sky policy county-wide

In a Wasatch County work meeting Wednesday, Heber City and Midway government leaders said they’ve taken strides to protect the local dark sky and plan to do more.

For Heber City, according to City Manager Matt Brower, that means updating Main Street lights to cast no light upward.

He said local governments should work together to curtail light pollution, which residents consider a priority.

“Where I live,” Brower said, “I can look down on Heber Valley Main Street and see that far away — those lights shine up, and it impacts negatively the night sky. This isn’t just a Heber issue; this is actually a Wasatch County issue. As we grow, of course, there’s increased lighting, and as more lighting you get, it impacts the night sky. You see less constellations, fewer stars, and it becomes a bigger and bigger deal to people who like that.”

Brower touted recent Heber efforts including a 2021 dark sky ordinance. It requires outdoor light bulbs for new developments and city infrastructure to be 3000 Kelvin color and LED. The city determined lights of those measurements give off a softer glowing light.

Midway passed a dark sky ordinance in 2022 that established some of the same rules in Heber.

Midway Mayor Celeste Johnson said her city will upgrade its Main Street lights this summer.

She also said the city will consider relaxing some rules about lights shining upward.

“There can be some appropriate uplighting that is still dark-sky compliant, and it’s one of the things we looked at in Midway and said no to, and now that we’re learning more about it, we may modify it a little bit because I think that there’s a need to be pretty accurate, and there are experts out there that can help us do that,” Johnson said.

Wasatch County’s outdoor lighting code, last updated in 2014, bans most uplighting.

That has come into focus recently during the early planning phases of the temple that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plans to build just outside Heber City.

Last fall the church asked the county to change its dark sky rules to allow uplighting. The church asked that exterior lights be allowed to shine upward until 10 p.m., and be turned on again at 5:30 a.m. It also proposed allowing uplighting on a case-by-case basis under conditional use permits.

The church was planning to appear before the county planning commission to seek a code change, but that’s now on hold after residents spoke out against the church’s request.

There was no action at Wednesday’s meeting. After Brower presented, Wasatch County Council Chair Spencer Park suggested local governments hire an expert to help the county, Heber City and Midway unify to preserve dark skies.

A recording of the county-wide dark sky discussion and county work meeting is available at wasatch.utah.gov.