Light Pollution Mitigation for Vermont Prison

When a regional astronomy club based in Springfield, Vermont raised opposition to a new state prison slated for the town, the state hired lighting engineer (and new

EBN Advisory Board member) Nancy Clanton to come up with a plan for reducing light pollution in the prison design. While her firm came up with an outdoor lighting plan for the prison that uses state-of-the-art technologies and designs to minimize light pollution to the extent possible, generating a certain amount of excess outdoor light is unavoidable with a prison. So Clanton suggested something novel: light pollution mitigation. If the state would pay for measures to reduce light pollution from area businesses to compensate for all of the additional light pollution that will result from the new prison, everybody should be happy.