Onondaga Audubon & Lights Out CNY Urge Homer Town Board to Vote No on Lighted Billboards
Homer, NY
Dear Members of the Homer Town Board,
I am writing on behalf of the Onondaga Audubon Society and Lights Out Central New York to express our serious concern about the Town Board’s proposal to amend the Zoning Code to introduce billboards in Homer. While we understand the desire to support local economic development, adding lighted signage comes with serious environmental costs and public health impacts.
Artificial lighting at night is a growing source of pollution, disrupting local ecosystems and obscuring the natural darkness. Illuminated billboards cause skyglow and glare, impacting wildlife, drivers, and nearby residents. And because the CNY grid is powered by natural gas and nuclear, they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and nuclear waste production.
Homer sits in a region of rich biodiversity on the Atlantic Flyway—a migratory superhighway used by hundreds of millions of birds each spring and fall. The majority of birds migrate at nighttime, when temperatures are cooler. However, migratory birds are attracted to artificial lighting, which can disorient them and lead to fatal collisions.
Your proposed brightness level of 280 cd/m² at night may not seem very high to us, but it is biologically intrusive and well above natural nighttime luminance. It will alter wildlife behavior, ecology, and physiology across a wide range of species, contributing to habitat degradation, ecosystem imbalance, and biodiversity loss (Owens et al., 2020).
Studies also show that light pollution is growing at an alarming pace, with satellite and ground-based measurements revealing that North Americans experience more than 10% annual increases in artificial light (Kyba et al., 2023). This doesn’t just affect wildlife—excessive nighttime lighting has also been linked to human health risks. A 2016 study from the American Medical Association warns that artificial light exposure at night is associated with increased risks of sleep disorders, obesity, depression, and even certain cancers (Motta, 2024).
We urge the Homer Town Board to look beyond short-term commercial benefits and consider the lasting environmental and public health impacts of introducing billboards. You have an opportunity to continue to protect your night skies and ecosystems for future generations.
Sincerely,
Meredith
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Meredith Barges, MA, MDiv
Board Member, Onondaga Audubon Society
Chair, Lights Out Central New York
Senior Fellow, Bird Collisions in the Anthropocene
Co-Author, Building Safer Cities for Birds: How Cities Are Leading the Way on Bird-Friendly Building Policy
