I agree that RCPGC needs work! Being thoughtful is not the same thing as having a perfect plan. Parts of the plan seem to be fine, and two parts need reworking.
I am not telling lies.
I asked the NPS-NLT team for an example of the type of low-light illuminated night-time driving range the planners were promising, anywhere in the world, Tammy Stidham replied for them. She is Associate Regional Director – Lands and Planning for the National Park Service in the DC region. She is the one who brought up TopGolf in her reply to me. Since I *really* don’t follow golf, I had no idea what that was, so I looked it up online, and went to visit one, and reported what I saw.
Here is the exchange:
Me: Where is there a golf course with lights that only go 50 yards in the manner described in the plan, with computer monitors showing the golfers where the ball went if it flies any farther?
[Stidham’s answer, with my emphasis:] “We are not lighting the entire golf course, we are only looking to light the driving range to support TopGolf and the parking lot for safety. The lighting would only be on a max of 90 mins after dark and then would be shut off.
“Outdoor driving ranges that offer TopGolf would/could have this type of lighting. The image below is from a range in Florida and illustrates what we are looking to accomplish. The Tracer system that is part of TopGolf, requires illumination for the system to function but this can be done in such a way to be as dark sky friendly as possible. We are continuing to develop lighting design but are committed to being as dark sky friendly as possible.”
2. [me again] Who in Dark Sky International signed off on this plan?
Stidham again: “We have not submitted the project to DarkSky International. We are still working through the development of our lighting design.
“We appreciate your questions – please let me know if you have more questions.”
I searched on Google to find the source of the image she sent me, and found that it was a members-only (not municipal) driving range named Clermont National, near Orlando. It is not as gaudy as a typical TopGolf outdoor ranges, and it seems to have has real grass. Clermont’s version of TopTracer technology looks to be a bit more serious and potentially useful (thus, more costly) to a serious golfer, since you can rewind the tape on the video display and see details of how your ball actually flies.
A daylight-only course like that, open from dawn to dusk, sounds like a great idea. RCPGC and other meadows like that are quite beautiful for quite some time after sunset and well before dawn.
Putting floodlights on such a plain driving range, a la Clermont National, or turning it into a typical carnival-like TopGolf range, with its loud music and bright lights, which are the two examples I was given, would ruin everything about this wonderful place.
The plan is also for the range to earn a lot of money.
I claim that there is no way on earth they can physically make an outdoor range that satisfies the very criteria that they claim it will fit, unless everyone wears night vision goggles as proposed by Arlen Raasch and others. I see that infrared goggles have gotten quite inexpensive. While not yet popular among golfers, you can click here to see a video with disk golf played at night with such goggles, on a course illuminated with IR flood lights every so often. (Studies indicate that the vast majority of wildlife does not seem to be bothered by infrared. )
Otherwise, I just don’t see any way for any outdoor driving range to be illuminated at night, at this particular venue, in any way that could possibly get approved under the guidelines set up by Dark Sky International. I have so far not been able to find a single outdoor, illuminated-at-night, golf driving range anywhere in the world that has requested DSI certification. Perhaps someone else can find one?
I think they are offering vaporware. The two examples I was specifically given by NPS/NLT obviously don’t pass.
From the NYT of 9/11/2020:
“There’s still a lot of work to be done to help golf communities reduce their own light pollution. Some communities are claiming dark-sky compliance without certification, while others are using dark skies solely as a marketing tool — a reminder that certification is important.”
[Let me note that today, Memorial Day 2024, and assuming one can play from the start of morning, official, civil twilight up through the end of evening civil twilight, that’s from 5:15 AM to 8:55 PM, fifteen and a half hours per day. Why isn’t that enough hours in a day?]
Not wanting to drive or fly all the way to Florida to take a look at Clermont National in person, I looked at their website and introductory video. While Clermont is a bit less carnival-like than a typical TopGolf driving range, take a look at their photos, notice all the unshielded lighting, and also find the one showing the whole driving range built up by floodlights coming from just above and below the viewer. There are – reflecting back from the trees. There is no way in hell that lighting would pass any Dark Sky guidelines, and Clermont does not make any claim to be dark-sky compliant, as far as I can tell.
Why did Stidham hold this one up as an exemplar?
So, to repeat, I am telling the truth. It is the lead National Park Service person on this project who writes that the plan is to use TopGolf and its tracer-and-lighting system. So I went to a TopGolf site, and took screenshots of a lot of TopGolf sites, and reported what I found.
We do not need anything like that in any National Park.
And yes, I definitely agree that RCPGC needs a rehab, but there are two parts of this particular plan that need major revision — the enormous number of mature trees to be cut down, and the night-time lighting plan for a golf driving range built and designed by TopGolf.
there is an almost infinite number of different ways of taking a piece of land and turning it into some sort of a golf course. There is not just ONE way to do it. The plan being pushed forward is proceeding despite overwhelming public opposition.
While the people who wrote the plan assure they are trying to be environmentally friendly as possible, the person who sketched the course drew it in such a way as to require the cutting of about 1200 to 1400 trees. Yes, they say these hardwood trees will then be dried and turned into actual furniture or lumber. But one could draw plenty of other overall plans that did NOT require such a massive clear-cutting. Creating meadows is not always a bad thing, but this is a very unpopular set of drawings! Why were there not alternative drawings proposed?
If they really wanted to be good stewards of the environment in every way, why on earth did they not pick up the phone and talk with with actual members of Dark-Sky International, or the rangers stationed at the Rock Creek Nature Center and Planetarium, only 1400 yards away from this proposed, illuminated driving range, concerning possible impacts of such lighting in such a previously very dark location, before going to all the trouble of writing this plan?
Or mention something to the volunteer amateur astronomers who have been working with those rangers for 75 years straight to let any member of the public, for free, have a look at our neighbors in the sky and get a better understanding of how this planet is just one tiny ball in a vast, empty wilderness of empty, fiery, blazing, cold, radiation-zapped outer space. This is our only planet, and we can’t keep making worse.
None of us – local NPS rangers, National Capital Astronomers, nor any member that we know of, at any level, in Dark Sky International had any glimmer of a hint that an illuminated night time golf driving range was in the works until about a month ago.
Some of us will be meeting with Stidham and others this week, remotely.
I will be very surprised if they can show us a driving range where visible lighting doesn’t go past 50 yards.
I think this is vaporware.
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