The Connection

Gail Harrison and Larry Suiters moved to a house behind Williamsburg Middle School (WMS) because their yard wouldn’t face a busy road in the front, and would be full of shade trees and quiet in the back. “Our son was 2 years old and our previous home had no backyard and the driveway had a steep downhill slope that fed right into Military Road. So we moved to the area near Williamsburg for the green space and trees behind our home, the quiet nights and lack of traffic. The nine children who lived in or near our cul de sac would chase fireflies and play hide and seek in the evening in the 60-foot wide wooded area between the houses and the WMS fields.”

County Manager Mark Schwartz will announce this week whether or not to proceed with a plan to light the playing fields next to Williamsburg Middle School (WMS) with 21 lamp displays of blue light at 5,700 Kelvin (K) level, for the benefit of those who want to play after the sun sets. Those players aren’t the 5-14 year-olds in the neighborhood who go to school there. Many are members of select soccer teams, drawing elite level players from all over the region, high school ultimate Frisbee squads or adult sports leagues that include members who do not live or work in Arlington County. Such teams pay rental fees to Arlington’s Department of Recreation for use of the space.

According to more than 500 residents who have signed a petition opposing the lights, the approval process seems to have missed a step: making sure the project would not harm human health, the environment and the character of the surrounding neighborhood.

Residents say at no time were those whose houses are sometimes as close as 60 feet to the playing fields told they would have 5,700 K lights installed so close to their homes. Lights would not be the only unwelcome addition to the neighborhood: parking overflow from the fields, and noise level from practices and games would be other “non-residential” aspects to the lighted fields, residents say.

Arlington County has one vendor for such lighting, and that source, Musco Lighting is providing the expertise on how the lighting will look and affect the neighborhood: there is no expert on the county staff and no photometric data (luminaire light distribution measured in a photometric laboratory) which can serve as a check on the vendor’’s portrayal of impact, residents said.

Residents believe they were misled during the approval process. “Those playing fields were never even meant to be lit at night,” said Gail Harrison, whose deck overlooks the fields. “And because of the way the fields are configured, the lights opposite my house would have to be angled to cover a 500-foot expanse — the width of the two fields and the run-off areas on either side of them — because the space between the two fields is too narrow to place poles between them without risking injury to players.”

Residents also suspect the beaming angle will be tilted toward the homes in order to be able to light the 500-foot expanse of both fields.

Another issue is how late the fields will be open to play if lit. The county standard curfew is 11 p.m. and that is usually negotiated with each neighborhood. The lights at Yorktown, for instance, were negotiated for a 10:30 p.m. curfew but that usually extends to 10:45 p.m. according to those who live in the neighborhood. The county also reserves the right to hold special events on the playing fields. A standing committee usually meets to decide the hours and limitations, but there is no such committee for Williamsburg; even if there were, according to residents, there are only three representatives from the neighborhood on the committee normally, and they are outnumbered by county staff, Arlington Public Schools, and sports club representatives.

Since there was no independent expert to ask about the lighting at WMS, residents of the area pooled their resources to hire lighting expert Nancy Clanton, president of Clanton & Associates. Her conclusion? “The standards the county is applying are not the right ones; there is no way the county’s proposal can be executed without affecting the character of the neighborhood. In addition, no photometric data was provided by the lighting company.” Clanton also pointed out in her report that the height limit under the Arlington County zoning ordinance is 68 feet: the proposed poles in the WMS scenario are each 80 feet tall. “This is more than double the 35-foot maximum height of surrounding dwellings under the ordinance.”

The purpose of a zoning ordinance is to have new structures blend into neighborhoods, not stand out from them. John Seymour, a member of the Williamsburg Field Working Group (WFWG) which examined the appropriateness of lighting the fields cautioned that “even with a zoning amendment allowing the erection of 80-foot tall poles and broad lighting arrays, the vendor’s data still shows significant exceeding of acceptable standards of glare (light that causes discomfort to the human eye) for historically dark residential neighborhoods."

Local residents also hired an arborist to assess the impact on woods in the area. It was the arborist’s conclusion that a minimum of one or more mature trees would have to be removed to make room for the lights and prevent overhanging leaves from blocking light from the array. Construction of the light poles would cause damage to the area, since a semi-truck, large crane, and tons of equipment would have to enter the area to set up the massive light poles, per the arborist.

While the medical issues associated with LED lights are still being researched, the American Medical Association (AMA) has said LED street lights shouldn't have Kelvin levels above 3,000. High Kelvin lights can cause suppression of melatonin in humans and in wildlife; disturbing the sleep cycles and circadian rhythm of the natural habitat of animals and people. Neighbors are worried about potential sleep problems suffered by field users and close-in residents, said Seymour.

Harrison says the issue consuming Arlington residents right now is how to use dwindling available green space. Arlington’s Parks and Recreation Department has a symbiotic relationship with sports-user groups, she noted, and has to negotiate supply and demand. Most playing fields are crowded on weekends and additional playing ground space is in demand. Conversely, natural green space is also in demand and county residents are anxious to maintain woods and trees in the area.

WFWG members have identified alternatives to increase field capacity without harming residential neighborhoods. Options include a new lighted field at Long Bridge Park, and installing organic synthetic turf on four existing lighted natural grass fields and 10 most heavily used unlighted grass fields.

WFWG was appointed by the County Board in July 2015, comprising neighbors, independent experts and others; they have been actively analyzing proposals for lighting the fields and their impacts for nearly two years. A majority of the WFWG (nine out of 14 members) signed the section of the group’s final report that’s entitled “Opposed to Lighting.”

County board members have not indicated how they will vote on the issue. Katie Cristol said, “This situation and decision, about whether to light the fields at Williamsburg, has been particularly challenging to me as a board member because we lack clear criteria for determining when and whether more intensified recreational uses (artificial turf, lighting) are appropriate or optimal for a given facility. Both the Williamsburg Field Working Group (WFWG) and the Public Spaces Master Plan Update process (POPs) have deliberated extensively on developing these criteria for future decision making, however. So my hope is that future decisions will be more grounded in their good thinking. “

Roy Gamse and Gail Harrison say residents were never told there was a plan to install synthetic turf and lighting on the fields. They were told the opposite during the public processes leading to construction of the new Discovery Elementary School. As the process evolved, whenever the question came up, the answer was always that the fields would be natural grass and unlit at night. In late summer 2013, after the gavel came down on the Discovery public processes, then-County Manager Barbara M. Donnellan called for synthetic turf to be installed with the understanding it would lead to lights.

The current county manager has previously indicated that once a decision is made to have synthetic turf, the fields have to be lighted at night to make the investment worth it.

At a meeting on the lights which took place May 20, 2013, lifelong Arlington resident Larry Suiters said, “Not since Custer has a group been ambushed this badly.”

Mary Curtius, media relations spokesperson for Arlington County government, responded to a query on this issue on June 26 saying, “The manager will be posting his recommendation on Williamsburg Middle School field lights to the county website by the end of this business week. County staff will brief the relevant county commissions on that recommendation in July. The manager's recommendation, formed following extensive public comment, will be considered first by the Planning Commission and then by the County Board in September. We will have no further comment until the recommendations are posted on our website.”