Pennsylvania House Bill 969

HB 969 targets state and state-funded outdoor lighting — the same scope that Maine's LD 1934 covers. If enacted, it would require publicly funded facilities in Pennsylvania to follow responsible outdoor lighting practices: shielding, appropriate light levels, warm color temperatures, and controls that limit operation when not needed. The bill's advocacy coalition includes the West Chester Green Team Dark Skies Committee, local conservation groups, and academic voices including Penn State faculty.

The legislative pattern HB 969 follows is well established in the 2026 dark sky policy wave. Maine enacted its version. Illinois enacted its version. Massachusetts S.3145 passed the Senate unanimously 39-0 and is advancing to the House. Pennsylvania's bill represents the same approach applied to a state that has lagged behind its New England neighbors in translating dark sky advocacy into statute — but has the advocacy infrastructure to close that gap if HB 969 advances through committee.

The Blue-Rich LED Problem — What Tim Lawlor Has Documented

Penn State Brandywine physicist Tim Lawlor has become one of the most cited local voices in the Philadelphia suburban dark sky conversation — appearing in WHYY, the Allegheny Front, and Chester County-area publications documenting what Globe at Night citizen-science data show about suburban Pennsylvania sky brightness trends. His specific argument is important for lighting specifiers to understand: it is not that the LED transition made skyglow worse overall — LED conversion reduced energy consumption substantially. It is that the specific LED sources most widely deployed in the transition are high-CCT cool white or daylight sources that produce more short-wavelength blue light than the high-pressure sodium sources they replaced.

Blue-rich short-wavelength light scatters more in the atmosphere than longer-wavelength amber or warm white light — a basic physics outcome documented in Rayleigh scattering. A street or parking lot that converts from 2200K high-pressure sodium to 5000K cool white LED at equivalent lumen output produces measurably more sky glow contribution per lumen because the blue component of the output scatters across a much wider atmospheric path. Lawlor's local citizen-science data shows this effect in the Philadelphia suburbs — Globe at Night measurements at sites like Lake Nockamixon show continuing sky brightness increases through the LED transition era rather than the improvement that energy-only arguments would predict.

The specification implication is direct: converting to LED is not sufficient. Converting to 3000K and below, fully shielded LED is what produces sky quality improvement alongside the energy savings. The former is the product choice that most municipalities made during the LED transition. The latter is what dark sky policy is now requiring as the retrofit to the retrofit.

Cherry Springs State Park and the Certification Gap

Pennsylvania's single certified Dark Sky site — Cherry Springs State Park in Potter County — is one of the most recognized dark sky parks in the eastern United States. Its remoteness from major urban centers (over 100 miles from any metropolitan area) and its elevation make it an exceptional site for astronomical observation. It is also not representative of where most Pennsylvania residents live or recreate.

Chester County is approximately 30 miles west of Philadelphia. It is suburban, developed, and affected by light domes from Philadelphia, Wilmington, and the sprawl of South Jersey. Pursuing Dark Sky Place certification in Chester County would represent the Urban Night Sky Place model — the same approach that Golden Gate Canyon near Denver and Lalashan near Taoyuan have demonstrated is viable for parks and natural areas in close proximity to major metropolitan light pollution. The West Chester Green Team's Dark Skies Committee is pursuing exactly this pathway.

Pittsburgh's earlier adoption of related outdoor lighting ordinance measures provides the urban Pennsylvania precedent. The combination of Pittsburgh's ordinance experience, Chester County's certification pursuit, and HB 969's statewide legislative approach gives Pennsylvania a three-track dark sky policy picture that is developing more rapidly than the single Cherry Springs site would suggest.

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