Nearby development puts a Virginia county's dark sky at risk

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As new housing and commercial developments creep closer to the Rappahannock County Park — a designated International Dark Sky Park in northern Virginia — stargazing enthusiasts wonder what will happen to the nightly natural wonder that has all but disappeared in more heavily populated areas, Christopher Connell reports for the weekly Rappahannock News. 

Fifteen miles southeast of the park, in adjoining Culpeper County, 760 homes and a new shopping center are being built, and local environmentalists are trying to convince developers "to go above and beyond what Culpeper zoning ordinances require to limit light pollution," Connell writes. Groups interested in keeping the sky dark sky virtually with the homebuilder's development manager, who seemed receptive, but the environmentalists' principal concern was with the shopping center.

As populations have grown in the towns surrounding Rappahannock County, longtime residents say the sky has already become less dark. Joyce Harman, a nearly three-decade-long resident, told Connell that from her house she "can see the lights of Culpeper, Warrenton and Front Royal. There’s tons more development."

Dark skies are important to the readership of the Rappahannock News, Connell writes. When the nonprofit Foothills Forum formed in 2015 to support the newspaper, it surveyed over 3,200 residents on what they saw as important issues and "people ranked keeping the skies dark as their sixth biggest concern." The Forum provides support for such polling, and for stories like Connell's; he is a retired reporter for The Associated Press.