Star-Friendly Lighting Standard Now in Place for Keystone
The Keystone community plan states that we shall value “dark, star-filled skies at night above the glare of urban lights.” Unfortunately, street lights in Keystone have been increasing in number and with different colors and intensities over the years.
KCA members noticed this light intrusion. We are proud to announce that there is a lighting standard now in place for our area moving forward.
For the past year, KCA has been working with Hillsborough County Public Works and TECO to select a “Keystone Friendly” light fixture. Our goal was to set a standard for any required lighting in Keystone to be warmer in color and more in line with our desire to keep out light pollution. We are pleased to announce Keystone now has an approved Dark Sky compliant light fixture selected for our community. While we were limited in our selections, based on county technical standards and availability, we chose the warmest color allowed at 2,700k. The light fixture itself will be a bronze color for a more natural look. The new light is:
- approved by International Dark Sky Association (IDA)
- contains no uplight
- uses a discrete type LED, which lowers the glare value
You can take a look at the tech specs here.
Special Thanks
KCA wants to thank Tampa Electric, led by Lee Isham, for all the time invested with our group and for setting up a display at the TECO facility for in-person viewing. The in-person display presented an excellent opportunity to educate our group and allow us to select a light that would best fit our community.
We want to extend a huge thank you to Hillsborough County’s Bob Campbell, Mike Flick, Channing Bickford, and the entire group at Hillsborough County Public Works. This team truly takes citizen service seriously and we could not be more grateful for all the time they invested in our community.
We would also like to extend our gratitude to the project facilitator, AECOM and their team led by Shahzad Ahmed.
Finally, thank you to all our KCA board members that invested their time to go through this process and show up on-site, late at night, to view these lights on behalf of the Keystone Community.
We hope these lights will help add value to the rural character of our community.