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| Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 1999 |
by Dan Brocius
"Daddy, will you have to go to jail?" asked my nine-year-old daughter.
"No, honey. These men are just making a threat," I said. "It's not anything real. They're just trying to make me afraid. Don't worry. Things will be fine."
Thus I reassured one of my daughters in early January. But my gut remained twisted as it had been for weeks.
Both girls had just picked up on, through the news media, stories about the $900 million lawsuit threat aimed at me and three others for speaking out about a land developer's plans to rezone more than 5,000 acres near the Arizona observatory where I work.
This was the latest in the crescendo of events leading to a mid-January public hearing and vote on the Canoa Ranch Specific Plan. And this was the last thing my family and I had ever expected when I took on the job of explaining the esoteric world of astronomical research.
The natural resources of high mountains, dry weather, and for a long time, dark skies, have made Arizona a haven for research astronomers. The US Naval Observatory and Lowell Observatory operate in northern Arizona. Southern Arizona is host to the US National Optical and Radio Observatories on Kitt Peak, University of Arizona telescopes in the Pinaleno and Catalina Mountains, and the Whipple and Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatories on Mt. Hopkins, where I work. Dozens of universities and research organizations throughout the US and the world support these facilities in one form or another, as does my employer, the Smithsonian Institution.
Prompted by the astronomy community, many Arizona cities and towns have adopted outdoor lighting codes as early as 1972 to protect the astronomy industry. These codes seek to keep light on the ground, where it's useful; and out of the skies, where it is wasted.
In the case of the Canoa Ranch, however, the code was not enough.
Mount Hopkins, 35 miles south of Tucson, in the Santa Rita Range of the Coronado National Forest, has been the site of a number of telescopes since 1968:
San Ignacio de la Canoa is the name of a land grant dating back to colonial Mexico. The area sits astride the Santa Cruz River, a long-traveled route in the Pimeria Alta (present-day Arizona and Sonora, Mexico). Today, Interstate 19 parallels the river, cutting through the west side of Canoa. The Canoa Ranch is a parcel of 5,200 acres Fairfield Homes bought for $6.4 million in 1995. It is just south of the retirement community of Green Valley, 30 miles south of Tucson, Arizona, and only nine miles from the summit of Mount Hopkins.
The land lies in unincorporated Pima County. The five-member Pima County Board of Supervisors makes decisions on land use and rezoning.
In 1996, the supervisors voted to change the Comprehensive Land Use Plan that would allow for higher density uses near the observatory. I had written letters for staff to send to the board, but not knowing what might come, we could only make a general statement of concern. In what now seems a prescient memo, I advised our staff then that the up to 750 acres of commercial property now permitted would be the biggest threat in terms of increased sky brightness.
Fairfield began its development plans with a request in 1997 to rezone 320 acres of Canoa on the northwest corner adjacent to existing houses in Green Valley, and furthest from Mt. Hopkins.
Area opposition began to form against that rezoning. At the final hearing, however, attended by hundreds, the rezoning passed by a 3-2 vote; the deciding vote coming from a board member who was literally propped up during the session and died soon thereafter.
In part because of the number of opponents, the supervisors told the developer that they did not want piecemeal zoning of Canoa Ranch. Any further rezoning of Canoa was to be under a master plan for the entire area. Fairfield and its consultants set about drawing up the Canoa Ranch Master Plan.
The original zoning of the Canoa Ranch allowed one residence per 4.3 acres, which equaled 1,395 houses. The plan now called for 6,400 houses, more than a four-fold increase. Along with the houses, the plan included two hotels, two golf courses, an airstrip, an equestrian arena, and 750 acres rezoned for commercial uses.
The observatory never said that master planning wasn't good--we think it's a good idea. It was what the plan contained and what it left out that was giving us problems.
If the developer intended to develop the parcel at the low density zoning it had, then we wouldn't have said anything. It would be the sort of development we would expect along this part of the Santa Cruz Valley. The difficulty lay in the huge amount of commercial land.
The 667 acres of Multifunctional Corridor (MFC) stretching along almost five miles of Interstate would allow nearly any kind of commercial activity, such as factory outlet stores, car dealerships, light industrial parks, or truck stops. The MFC plus the 65 acres of Neighborhood Activity Center (NAC) would be larger than six Tucson Malls [the largest in Tucson]. The 65 acres of NAC alone are greater than any mall in Tucson in area and comparable to all present commercial zoning in the rest of Green Valley.
People might think that a Smithsonian observatory could fend off such a threat on name alone. You have to remember that we're a field station. Our local staff numbers 20-25, mostly technical and support people. I'm the sole public information/affairs staff.
In the face of the developer and his army of consultants, I felt anything but powerful.
At the series of hearings before the Planning and Zoning Commission, I typically appeared alone to express our concerns about the amount of commercial property involved and the fact that it was only nine miles away from the observatory. Distance counts for a lot. "It's the amount and proximity," we kept saying.
Usually I talk to science, environmental, or general assignment reporters when handling public affairs for the observatory. Now it was the political reporters who called. I found myself considering every response I made. In the normal course of things, the greatest grief I get is from a scientist who thinks his or her work or institution wasn't properly mentioned in a news story. Now I worried about how a quote could be taken out of context and land the observatory on the front page as the unreasonable foe of all development.
Once, when called for a comment, I could just hear the reporter pause to write it all down: "We would be derelict in our duty as custodians of the observatory to say nothing."
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| CARTOON FOR TUCSON WEEKLY BY RAND CARLSON 1999 |
And I believe that. There's $220 million of tax- payers' money invested in the mountain facilities. And all during the Canoa Ranch hullabaloo we were moving and installing a 6.5-meter-diameter mirror in the MMT to make it the largest single-mirror telescope in North America--bigger than Palomar--a project we expect to have a minimum 50-year useful lifetime.
I don't know where presenting your case ends and lobbying begins.
Observatory staff had had some inconclusive meetings with the developer regarding outdoor lighting at Canoa. Fairfield said, "make the tightest code you want and we'll put it in the plan." We secured a set of Fairfield's proposal in order to do our own measurements of lighting.
I drafted a preliminary document to regulate outdoor lighting on Canoa to a higher degree than the existing county code would. I called in colleagues to help with design and calculation. This is where the high output of the commercial land reared its ugly head.
We found that nearly one square mile of commercial zoning less than 10 miles away was simply too much, too close. To protect the observatory, we would have to limit light to less than safe and livable levels.
To explain this, I put together a booklet called Light Pollution:
Threat to Astronomy. It outlined the scientific and economic
worth of the Mount Hopkins site and described the potential impact
of the Canoa Plan. We explained the difference that distance makes.
Specifically, a light source on the Canoa Ranch is 30 times brighter
than the same light 37 miles away in Tucson. The calculated skyglow
from 1,395 homes at Canoa would be the same as 41,850 homes in
Tucson.
I invited county staff and supervisors to visit the observatory
at night so that we could show them the last dark place in the
Santa Cruz Valley.
For a meeting with the planning and building codes staff of
the county, I sent out a call to the astronomy community. The
call was well answered. Having our lighting calculation expert,
Chris Luginbuhl of the US Naval Observatory, there, as well as
astronomers from Kitt Peak National Observatory, the Planetary
Science
Institute, the MMT Observatory, Whipple Observatory,
and the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory really lent credibility to our cause. My status changed from loose cannon to a reasonable representative of the astronomy community.
In early December, we sent a letter to Pima County, with a copy to Fairfield, pointing out that this would be the single largest installation of commercial outdoor lighting along the Santa Cruz Valley, and that it would significantly affect observatory research.
The local news media picked up on the new player in the rezoning debate. One reason, perhaps, that we came to the front in this issue was that we were a relative novelty in the continuing land struggles of the West. On the one side, there was the big developer from Scottsdale who wanted to rezone a large amount of fairly untouched land to build golf courses, retirement homes, and shopping plazas.
On
the other side had been the usual suspects: neighborhood associations
of people who had moved to this area for the rural lifestyle,
environmentalists who pointed out the damage to habitat and riparian
areas, Native Americans who were concerned about the high density
of Native American archaeological sites on the land, and area
residents who didn't want to see that kind of development.
An observatory speaking out was something new, and we got attention.
The most surprising attention was the threat of a lawsuit delivered as a Christmas gift.
Fairfield attorney Frank Cassidy sent a letter charging Whipple Observatory staff and others of illegally lobbying against the project "under the guise of providing scientific information."
One of the "improper actions" cited was my distribution of the light-pollution pamphlet at a public hearing.
The letter also named Robert Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Chris Luginbuhl of the US Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station, and Craig Foltz, director of the MMT Observatory.
Cassidy claimed we and our taxpayer-supported institutions would be guilty of a government "taking" if the Fairfield Plan were denied. We would be liable, then, for the $900 million value Fairfield had placed on its Canoa Ranch Plan.
While the threatened suit's premises appeared ridiculous, it was not the way I wanted to start the New Year.
If the threat was intended to scare us away, it had the opposite effect: it lined up the Smithsonian and Naval Observatory behind us and galvanized the astronomic community in general. The press took it as a restraint on free speech, and suddenly we were talking to editorial boards. All Canoa Ranch Plan opponents contacted us and kept us posted on their activities. Both Tucson dailies thumped Fairfield in editorials with titles like "Fairfield's Crude Threat."
Now that combat
was fairly joined, it seemed time to spread the word.
Coincidentally, in the week before the January 12 hearing, the American Astronomical Society was meeting in Austin, where I had expected to work for Steve Maran in the pressroom. When I saw the story was getting wider attention, and some of the supervisors told me that getting a call from a national reporter sometimes made you rethink an issue, I sent a background packet to the AAS meeting and asked a couple of my colleagues to alert anyone who might want to cover the story. Nature, Science, Astronomy, and Sky & Telescope all did stories.
As the eleventh hour neared, Tucson astronomer Mark Sykes, using his own resources, set up an electronic petition on the Web. It had two forms, one for US-based astronomers and one for others from around the world.
According to Sykes, "Over 2,200 people responded, representing 44 states in the US and 29 countries around the world. We also received around 80 letters to the Board of Supervisors protesting the Fairfield legal threat as well as the threat of light pollution to "our observatories." In addition, the use of the Internet for this purpose rated a story in a Tucson paper.
The Canoa Ranch rezoning had become such a political hot potato that the Planning and Zoning Commission voted 4-3 not to make a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors because of so many unresolved issues. The County Planning Staff's recommendation to "approve" had attached nearly 30 conditions.
We knew two of the five supervisors would vote against the plan, and two would almost certainly vote for it. That left the chair, Sharon Bronson, as the swing vote. She had been elected on a fairly "green" platform, but had lately earned the ire of local environmentalists for voting to approve some large developments.
I was ready for this to be over. It was like college exam week lasting four months.
Because of the expected crowd, the hearing was held in the 1,000-seat high school auditorium. More than 1,000 people showed up. One roofing contractor bused in 60 workers dressed for the event in identical shirts and caps. More than 200 people testified.
By the luck of the draw, the first speaker was Ann Weekes, an English professor and the wife of the head of the Whipple gamma ray project. She spoke in her precise Irish lilt, and damned with faint praise: "It's a beautiful plan--the only problem is, we simply don't need it." Her statement brought considerable applause from the audience, and for the first time in weeks, I felt a bit better.
By the time MMT director Craig Foltz got to the microphone, he was so pumped up that he dropped our prepared statement entirely and spoke off the cuff: "This is not bush league astronomy!" he cried, punctuating each word with his finger in the air.
So on through the afternoon and evening we went. Reporters with deadlines had to leave to file stories. TV reporters at their remote trucks ground their teeth as 5 p.m., 6 p.m., and 10 p.m. newscasts came and went with no conclusion to report.
In a classic statement, Fairfield consultant Frank Thomson said, "We're turning out the lights by 10 p.m. If the issue is dark skies, we don't need calculations. We'll just turn the lights off."
Finally, at 11:15 p.m., the Board of Supervisors entertained
a motion to vote on the Canoa Ranch Specific Plan. The first vote
was pro--but the next four were NO.
I'd witnessed the first major rezoning defeat in 25 years in Pima
County. It certainly wasn't astronomy alone which turned this
back. Many factors are forcing the county to rethink the prevailing
rapid growth. But we'd survived round one.
Board Chair Bronson warned Fairfield, "Do your homework, bring everyone into the process and make sure the development conforms to the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan" before you think about re-filing the plan.
The CEO of Fairfield Development has since apologized to all of us named in the lawsuit threat letter. We have met again and agreed the astronomy community will have a large hand in the outdoor lighting design for Canoa. Fairfield has said it would now like Canoa to be a model community for dark sky protection.
At the same time, a revised Outdoor Lighting Code to be adopted by most area jurisdictions is making its way through review. By the end of summer we hope it will be in place and prevent the need for future nail-biters.
I hope by year's end that I might return to doing whatever I was doing before "the plan" consumed my life. Perhaps I could write another pamphlet.n
Dan Brocious is a public information specialist at Smithsonian Institution/Whipple Observatory, Amado, AZ.