Small Town News

EWU project wont light up the night sky

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New lights will brighten campus streets, reduce costs, increase safety

Drivers, walkers and other users of the streets around Eastern Washington University may soon notice their paths are a lot brighter.

The university is in the process of upgrading much of the street lighting around campus; a $725,000 project designed to increase safety, as well as energy and maintenance efficiency while bringing the university into compliance with national glare and night sky light pollution reduction standards, known as "dark sky compliance."

When everything is done and the lights come on sometime in February, the university will have replaced old 1970s-era fixtures along Washington, Cedar, Elm, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Streets with more modern fixtures that provide better color rendition and definition. It's all part of work funded by state capital appropriations designated for "infrastructure preservation," Eastern's construction and planning director KC Traver said.

"The result will be more attractive, energy efficient lighting that is 'dark sky compliant' and which will provide better coverage of the streets and walkways and will be easily maintained by the university electric shop," Travers said.

Project manager Troy Bester said the contractor, Spokane's Accurate Electric, was replacing about 50 old-style wooden poles, some of which were rotting, with 69 new, 30-foot metal poles. The new fixtures will be more decorative, although "nothing over the top" Bester added. They are also at the same time better sealed against the elements and easier to maintain, thus decreasing costs.

The lamps used in the new fixtures will be metal halide, which provides a whiter, better color depicting light than the current lamps, which make things appear more yellow. Combined with the fixtures, the new lighting will provide better coverage and keep more light from being cast upwards.

"It's the right thing to do. We're not sending light up into the sky," Bester said. "I think people are going to find it more pleasant."

The work began early this fall, but residents may not have noticed it as much as previous lighting projects thanks to the use of a process known as "directional boring." Whereas most lighting projects require digging trenches that disrupt vehicle and foot traffic, directional boring uses a flexible drilling assembly. Bester said the contractor could drill a hole at one end of a conduit run, and using the flexible bit, drill down at an angle, then using an electronic depth finder make right angle turns and curves as it drills in essence a small tunnel.

At the end of that particular run, the assembly is then used to pull electrical conduit back along the run as the drill bit is pulled back out the tunnel it just created. The lighting bases are then installed in holes along the run.

Bester said directional boring was a bit more expensive, but because it didn't require the use of trenches, was safer and more convenient for the public.

The project also uses the water saturated/vacuum method of digging for the light pole base holes. Under this process, the ground is made wet and then literally sucked out, like using a vacuum cleaner.

"It makes for a cleaner hole," Bester said. "It worked well, except around Seventh where we ran into a shelf of basalt near the child care center."

Bester said plans call for the poles to begin going up around Dec. 16 once students leave for the holiday break. And while the schedule called for the lights coming on around late February, Bester said there's a good chance some of the runs could be fired up by Jan. 4 before students return.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.



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© 2010 Cheney Free Press Cheney, Washington. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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