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To neighbors, Friday night lights may be too bright

Residents close to the Wiregrass High School stadium are dreading the day 120,000 watts start beaming.

By CHUIN-WEI YAP
Published October 15, 2006

WESLEY CHAPEL - Linda Craddock woke up two weeks ago to find an 80-foot stadium light at the back of her Morningmist Drive home.

Within a day, five more would go up.

Eventually, 18 would light the proposed Wiregrass High School's football, baseball and softball fields just behind Craddock's neighborhood.

"I call them Raymond James lights," she said, referring to the Tampa stadium. "That's what they look like. ... I'm all for schools. We need more schools. My concern is the noise and the lights."

The high school is scheduled to open in January.

The lights are about 200 feet from Craddock's back yard. From her living room, the poles are stark against the sky, replacing a large part of what used to be oaks, pines and cypresses in a meadow where cows, deer and sandhill cranes used to wander.

Craddock, who is trying to sell her home, said some prospective buyers were visibly turned off after seeing the lights from her back yard.

School officials say they tried their best to design the school and its stadiums to limit the impact on residents, but failed to alert neighbors early on what to expect.

The lights won't shine directly into homes, said John Petrashek, the Pasco County School District's director of new construction. But some "hue" or "spillage" would result, he said.

He is offering to plant trees to buffer the homes from the lights, but acknowledged the trees would take many years to reach a level where they might actually screen the lights.

These are not your average street lights. Each pole carries between seven and 30 lamps. Each lamp is 1,000 or 1,500 watts.

The football and soccer field, which will be closest to Craddock's home, will have four poles with 30 lamps each. This means the stadium will beam at least 120,000 watts of light - that's about 300 to 500 streetlights put together.

The baseball and softball fields flanking the football field have six and four poles, respectively, each carrying between seven and 12 lamps.

It is too late now to take the lights down, school officials said.

"There's nothing we can do to make them disappear," Petrashek said. "What we are trying to do is lessen the impact on the surrounding community."

Why not talk to neighbors before the lights actually went up?

"I'm not involved in the land acquisitions department, so I didn't know what was communicated with the neighbors," Petrashek said.

Residents say nothing was communicated to them, though they say Petrashek has been helpful since they began pressing for answers.

Petrashek is now asking the affected residents to get together and give him ideas on what they want.

But Morningmist Drive may never be the same as it was when Craddock moved in nine years ago.

For one thing, Friday night lights will be a new reality.

"Most Friday nights, 11 p.m. would be a rule of thumb," Petrashek said when asked when the lights would be shut off.

The lights may be used three to five times a week, he said. Dr. John Long Middle School also will use the fields.

Petrashek is also proposing a 6-foot chain-link fence to separate the school and the community, but Craddock wants a higher wall.

He thinks the fence would be enough to stop students cutting through the residents' yards as a short cut. She thinks it will not be enough.

"A wall would serve no purpose of stopping spillage," Petrashek said. "A wall's not part of the budget."

At an estimated 1.4 miles costing $115 per foot, according to Petrashek's figures, a wall could cost the district an additional $850,080.

It's not just the lights that bother the residents.

JoAnn Boser now has a pile of dirt butting right up to her back yard. She has since learned from officials at the Southwest Florida Water Management District that this area, between the stadium and her yard, is supposed to be an artificial wetland area created to compensate for the school's environmental impact.

"I don't want my yard to flood," she said. "I want a tree line all the way across. I would like to see those lights reduced 15 feet."

The relevant Swiftmud officials working on the case were not available Tuesday, spokesman Michael Molligan said.

But Molligan said the artificial wetland is a school district creation, ruling out one theory among residents that Wiregrass' developers were also trying to increase the area to compensate for their environmental encroachments elsewhere.

Molligan said the new wetlands would create more stormwater storage, which would lessen the risk of flooding rather than increase it.

Petrashek said the district plans to put a black vinyl chain-link fence around the artificial wetlands, designed to blend in with the environment.

Chuin-Wei Yap covers growth and development in Pasco County. He can be reached at 813909-4613 or cyap@sptimes.com.

[Last modified October 14, 2006, 22:11:06]