Mr. Bill Leach

So many different things happened this past week or two. I proposed the map idea to the class and people seemed to think it would be a good idea. Also! I met with the Lighting Facilities Manager, who is named William Leach, and he had lots of valuable information for me. First of all I asked him if this magical map that Bettymaya told me about exists. He told me YES!!! I was so freaking excited and I had so much hope in my heart for something amazing to come out of this project! Would you like to see the current version of the map? Of course you would, so here it is.

This is the current map, but Mr. Leach informed me that a group of interns is currently working on updating the map and they are currently 80% finished with it! Bill thinks that they will be done within the next couple of weeks and then he offered me my VERY OWN COPY. HAZAHHHHH! So anyways, that was amazing to hear! He also informed me that all of the outdoor lighting up to Commonwealth Avenue is Dark sky compliant! Also kind of a big surprise for me! All of the spheres on the map represent lighting fixtures, and all of the brownish/pink ones are HORRIBLE LOLLIPOP LIGHTS! I was not under the impression that grand steps were being taken in our own backyard to stop light pollution. It made me feel very proud of my school and the people trying to make a difference here.

Some of the meeting however, included some not so awesome information. For example, all of the lighting from the bottom of President's Circle to Commonwealth avenue, besides the parking lots are Dark Sky compliant. Bill said that the lighting in the Parking Lots is technically under the jurisdiction of Commuter Services and NOT Facilities Management. So, that is not currently a project that is underway as far as we know. But, Bill said everywhere else will be Dark Sky Compliant in the hopefully near future! What a huge step for the U huh? He also told me that Bettymaya is going to have some trouble up in Fort Douglas, because the U wants to preserve the historical integrity of the light fixtures, but the state mandates that there needs to be at least 3 different light fixtures located in FD. Bettymaya had a hard enough time coming up with a historically accurate fixture that was night sky compliant, and so it is going to be DAMN near impossible to find 2 more. I hope that she finds a way, because her project is such an important step in the process of eradicating light pollution at the U.

The last thing we touched on during my conversation with Mr. Leach was the amount of wattage that the lighting at the U uses every month. I didn't think that it would be possible for him to separate out the lighting from the other electrical components, but he informed me that he has some sort of database that can relate this information and he promised to send it on to me as soon as he can. I figured that once I had the wattage I could look up the amount of non-LED to LED comparison and then look up how much is spent on average per watt and come up with an amount that would be saved if the U switched all of the lights to LED. This is not currently a project, replacing the already exisiting light bulbs with LED, but as of Summer 2014 any new light fixture being put in MUST be dark sky compliant and MUST be LED, SO SCORE ONE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!!!! YESSSS!