There is something very special about watching a West Texas sunset. With nothing blocking our view as the sun settles low on the horizon, on most nights the colors are simply magical. The night skies are also something to behold, with hundreds, if not thousands, of stars visible on a clear night.
What sets our sunrises, sunsets and night skies apart from more heavily populated areas is the emptiness. The horizon isn’t dominated by buildings from the next city over. The dark isn’t dulled by the artificial lighting from those buildings.
That is just part of the reason why that when William Johnson McDonald left the University of Texas his $1 million estate, they chose to fulfill his wishes by creating the McDonald Observatory in sparsely populated West Texas. Perched high in the Davis Mountains, the observatory has continued to grow over the years. According to an article in the Dallas Morning News, by former reporter Jeff Mosier, the scientists at the observatory have been credited with calculating the size of stars by their brightness and temperature, helped define the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy and found the most distant supernova.
The observatory and its staff are also becoming well known for a project they’re working on a little closer to home.
As oilfield activity has increased in the region, the observatory’s staff has been working with drilling and other companies to reduce light pollution. And in another example of how the public and private sectors can work on problem-solving, the results are win-win, according to Mosier’s article.
The observatory began measuring artificial light in August 2015, the newspaper reported.
Just more than three years later, the light measure had nearly tripled. The source of that light? Drilling rigs, which operate around the clock. At night, the rigs and worksites are lit by light towers — which are each capable of illuminating several acres.
And that’s why Bill Wren, special assistant to the observatory’s superintendent, reached out to one of the larger operators, Pioneer Resources, about working together to try and make sure the rigs and observatory could live in harmony.
According to Mosier’s article, Pioneer’s president and CEO Stacy Locke has a family ranch near Marathon. While he didn’t know much about the McDonald Observatory, he knew about dark, star-filled West Texas skies.
As it turned out, rig workers were already struggling with lighting problems. Some of the lights were creating dangerous glares. So Wren got to work with folks from Pioneer, as well as Apache Corp., to create guidelines that improved the lighting’s effectiveness by directing it where it was needed — onto the worksite. The guidelines were so well received that the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, Texas Oil and Gas Association and American Petroleum Institute all endorsed them, according to the article.
Far too often in situations like this, the two sides immediately dig in their heels and fight with each other — through the courts, through new regulations and through the media. The end result is usually that nothing much is accomplished and neither side gets what it wants or needs.
In this case there was a mutual benefit after the parties agreed to listen to each other and work together to find a solution.
And as is reported far too infrequently, science and industry found themselves in agreement on the path to follow into the future.
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Unfortunately there is a sad footnote to this story. It was one of the last stories that Mosier reported for the Dallas Morning News. He was one of about 20 newsroom personnel, and 43 overall, recently downsized out of a job by the newspaper’s owner in a cost-cutting move.
The work he did to bring stories like this one to that newspaper’s readers was important and will be missed.
Bill Crist is the publisher of the Snyder Daily News. Comments about his column may be emailed to publisher@snyderdailynews.com.