A Reasonable Code Revision

The East Hampton Village Board should go forward with the revision of its 10-year-old outdoor lighting rules despite an 11th-plus-hour ruffle. Excessive nighttime illumination is both an annoyance and an affront to a community that is proud of its ambience. The aspect of the proposal that some would like eliminated is the regulation of wasteful and unnecessary landscape lighting.

Of all the inane practices, pointing spotlights up into one’s trees strikes us as among the silliest, but it is also a serious matter. Electrical power generation is a major source of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

It would be a substantial contradiction for a village that took an early and progressive stand against waste by banning thin, single-use plastic shopping bags to encourage this practice. Either the health of the planet matters or it does not. A homeowner’s ability to gaze up into his or her trees while sitting on a patio or walking in or out of a house is not worth throwing out a perfectly reasonable code change.

The village board is to return to the issue next Thursday, continuing a hearing on an update to the lighting code which was reviewed by the village design review board, among others. It seeks to reduce the spilling of light beyond property lines, as well as reduce the glare that can make finding one’s way at night difficult.

The board should approve the changes and tell those who prefer the amber-hazed hues of suburban nocturnal gloom to a sky full of stars that the nights here should remain dark.

Those trees? We’ll look at them in the morning.