What does this light do?

Creates hazards for drivers and pedestrians. Increases risks of cancers like breast, prostrate, and thyroid. Increases risk of diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Makes it unsafe to walk on our own property.  Makes us more vulnerable to crime while outdoors.  Creates an illegal public nuisance. Aggravates existing eye conditions, mental, and physical heath conditions. Decreases the ability to sleep, causing problems with functioning and productivity. Causes retinal problems, headaches, and eye soreness.

It's environmentally hazardous to songbirds, raptors, and the endangered monarch butterfly. Hazardous to local wildlife, livestock, agriculture and all plant life. Not recommended for residential areas. The American Medical Association opposes these lights. Not engineered according to international, national, and state lighting organization standards.  

There are many streetlighting alternatives that are safe, shielded, inexpensive, and LED.  Yes, LED lighting will be mandatory by 2028, but hazardous LED lights do not need to be installed. 

Please sign this petition to insist on responsible, safe, IES (Illuminating Engineering Society)/ANSI (American National Standards Institute)/DarkSky approved, fully shielded streetlighting in our community.

In our small, rural, historic town of Fairfield, PA, we’ve faced immense challenges due to our utility company, MetEd (a First Energy Corporation), installing improper streetlighting. In the Fall of 2025, without any warning to residents, a single, unshielded, bright 4000K GE Cobrahead LED streetlight was installed on a very rural, residential back street to nowhere in the Borough. The light was so intense that it lit up houses across from it like a stadium and made it dangerous to go out our front door. It infiltrated our homes, making it nearly impossible for residents, including myself, to get a good night’s sleep, even after installing room darkening blinds and curtains. The light penetrated through our houses and into our back yards as well. Residents as far away as 300 yards in each opposite direction complained of not being able to sleep or look in the direction of the light without strong after images. Residents affected by the light complained multiple times to the Borough Council. This was from just one light. MetEd said that if all the lights were like this, it would look fine. No, it would be much worse. These unsafe lights make everything they illuminate look like an industrial warehouse parking lot. It’s a very bad look for a rural, historic town.

After 2 months, multiple complaints, and the press involved, the initial LED light was replaced with an unshielded sodium vapor light, which also has public nuisance and light pollution problems, but it offered a slight reprieve due to it being a lower Kelvin (2200K warmer orange). However, we’ve been informed that this is a stopgap measure. It’s anticipated that our sodium vapor lights will be replaced throughout the town with bright 3000K, unshielded LED lights, which will produce the same difficulties we encountered with the 4000K light. The difference will be MetEd’s 2026 ones are slightly yellower than the 2025 LEDs. They will be unshielded, with no shield possible to fit them.

The brightness of the unshielded LED lights is not just a discomfort. They are a safety hazard. The harsh glare made it perilous for anyone in the vicinity of the light to move around while having their gaze anywhere near the light. This created a real risk of accidents such as falls down stairs, while navigating our property. Myself, my family, and visitors were unsafe on our property. The image reflecting in our eyes took about 2 minutes to adjust before we could proceed after covering our eyes from the light. This image happened whenever we left our front door or our garage door, as the light is nearly at eye level. In PA, it is illegal for light to bother people of normal sensibilities, and if it does, it must be remedied. MetEd has repeatedly ignored this law and has directly said that they will not shield their lights.

These lights also create hazards for drivers and pedestrians, for everyone who lives, works in, frequents, or passes through our town. The glare on the windshield from it is like driving into a sunrise. Studies show that it takes drivers exposed to this light a full 2 minutes for their eyesight to recover. Imagine that light after light, all through town. Pedestrians and parked cars are difficult to see and are endangered.  Between the glare and the very deep shadows it creates, pedestrians cannot see intruders until they are very close to them, making these lights also hazardous in terms of crime prevention and personal safety.

These unshielded, cooler temperature, laser like, bright LED lights are not approved by IES/ANSI, international and national standards for streetlighting.  We can’t afford to have our community, our homes, our health, our safety, our insurance rates, and our property values compromised by irresponsible streetlighting. 

Lighting affects the quality of life and safety for everyone in our Borough, residents, visitors, and passersby. Modern studies have shown the importance of shielding and properly directing outdoor lighting. The lights MetEd plans to install undermine individual health by aggravating existing health problems and directly contributing to cancers such as breast, prostrate, and thyroid. They are bad for local businesses and area agriculture as well.
In addition, they cause severe light pollution, disrupting local wildlife, crops, plants, and even the migratory paths of birds and the endangered monarch butterfly in the Western Hemisphere. Those migratory paths run right through our Borough. Food we grow for our families and agricultural businesses will be negatively affected.

The final decision rests with Fairfield Borough officials. On behalf of our community and any who live, work, or pass through, we are urging MetEd and the Borough Council, Mayor, and Zoning Officials to only approve and install lighting that is appropriate to each area in the Borough, following IES/ANSI/DarkSky standards. Appropriate LED lighting is readily available, energy saving, and safe. These lights need to be of a warmer temperature (current standard is 2700K or lower for residential streets; it keeps going lower each year. 2200K is a good goal number), brightness that is appropriate to the area where each light is installed, and fully shielded so they illuminate only the public areas (sidewalks, streets) and do not shine into and onto private properties, nor into the sky, causing more light pollution. These solutions are technologically and financially achievable and have been successfully implemented in many other communities.

Information and assistance is offered, at no cost, to the Borough officials and MetEd representatives and employees from a representative on Mechanicsburg, PA’s Environmental Council and DarkSkyPA, an organization that encourages responsible, safe lighting. When no one contacted him for 5 months, he reached out to Fairfield Borough.  It is now up to Fairfield Borough Council to decide whether or not they will meet with him.

Your support makes a difference. We need lighting that takes into account the rural and historic value of our Borough. We need our well being, safety, and our Borough valued over MetEd’s desires.  

(No AI used in photograph. No alteration of the light or its glare. The only editing was to manually blot out identifying features of vehicles/mailboxes.)