Starting New Year’s Eve, all homes and businesses in Park City and Summit County are required to keep their lights pointed down and use warm temperature bulbs. Uplighting is also banned.
The rules are meant to save energy and reduce light pollution, which blocks out stars and can interfere with sleep patterns and animal behavior.
Those who don’t comply in Park City and unincorporated Summit County could face citations and fines.
Nextdoor in Wasatch County, county manager Dustin Grabau said enforcement in unincorporated areas is similar.
“Because of the rural nature of our county, we operate on a complaint-based zoning compliance model,” he said.
But unlike Summit County, rules in Wasatch County only apply to commercial properties, not private homes.
“If people are having issues with a commercial property that’s not following the lighting code, we issue a letter to a property owner or business owner letting them know that they’re out of compliance and giving them a chance to come into compliance,” Grabau said.
Wasatch County changed its rules back in April 2023, with councilmembers saying they had tried to find a middle ground between preventing light pollution and restricting businesses.
The new outdoor lighting rules were controversial because of their connection to plans for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to construct a temple in the Heber Valley.
The church broke ground on the temple on land just outside the Heber City limits along Center Street and got the county’s permission to shine lights upward on the proposed 210-foot steeple.
The decision sparked a monthslong legal dispute between citizen group Save Wasatch Back Dark Skies and the county, but no changes were made to county code.
The only current rule for homes prohibits “light trespassing,” when a homeowner’s outdoor lights shine onto a neighboring property.
Grabau said the county council may consider making stricter or wider-reaching outdoor lighting rules at some point in the future, but it’s not a top priority for now.
Within the Heber City limits, there are more regulations on residential lighting.
The Heber City Council required all new developments to be dark sky compliant in 2021.
Grabau said the residential requirement is the main difference between the two governments’ approaches.
“I think it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison when you’re discussing the commercial lighting standards,” he said. “I think it’s easy to argue that, actually, if Heber City were to apply the county’s lighting standard, on average, a property would have less light.”
Heber is also working to bring older buildings and streetlights into compliance with dark skies standards. Residents can fill out a form on the city’s website to request changes to lighting in their neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, Midway is considering possible changes to its outdoor lighting requirements. At a city council meeting Tuesday, Dec. 17, Midway leaders will discuss whether to allow certain kinds of outdoor lighting for businesses.
The changes would also add more detail to rules about holiday lights. White string lights would be allowed year-round, but multicolored string lights would only be permitted from mid-November through mid-January.
Details about the Heber City, Midway and Wasatch County dark skies rules are available on each government's website.
![[FILE] Some LDS Temples, such as the one in Salt Lake City, shine lights upward on their walls. That practice, known as "uplighting," is at the center of a request the church made to change Wasatch County's outdoor lighting code.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/5894997/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4677x2606+0+0/resize/560x312!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F59%2F11%2Fcf6108474490a2cbc35a38b5b417%2Fadobestock-2409708.jpeg)