It all started with a streetlight. Actually, a “collector road class” streetlight improperly installed in front of a home in a historic neighborhood of Norfolk in 2024. The glare, light trespass, and overwhelming light level became the impetus  for the formation of Norfolk’s Citizens for Responsible Lighting (CRL) in response to an LED streetlight conversion using lighting from Dominion Energy.

Word of mouth led CRL to DarkSky Virginia and to our network of advocates. By the end of 2024, the Virginia Responsible Streetlighting Coalition had formed with the purpose of persuading Dominion Energy to improve both its lighting inventory and its process for providing streetlighting (as well as parking lot and area lighting) to communities in its service area.  By early 2025, we had delivered an in-depth policy memo to Dominion and scheduled our first of several meetings with Dominion’s lighting managers and other team members.

By July we had had a tangible effect:  For the first time ever, Dominion began offering 2700K options in several luminaire styles and they had begun planning for a pilot project on dimming adaptive controls.

This is a start but a modest one. After all, backlash to LED conversions began a dozen years ago, and other municipalities began opting for warmer 2700K  lights (at lower levels) as early as 2014.   As appreciative we are for those 2700K options, much of Dominion’s catalog continues to favor pollution-producing lights like the ultimate bad actor, the acorn.  Color is just one of the Five Principles of Responsible Lighting, and it will require much more change to bring better streetlighting to Dominion’s customers (VEPGA members) which have been relying on presumed expertise from Dominion—when in fact Dominion’s perspective is that they simply are providing customers what they request.


The result is streetlighting without qualified lighting planning and design. 

Our coalition’s efforts became a crash course in understanding the role of the Virginia Energy Purchasing Governmental Association, which negotiates electricity contracts with Dominion for its 170 government entity members. VEPGA extended their existing contract with Dominion until June 2026, and negotiations are underway.  Our coalition, through communication with local government leaders and VEPGA board members, has begun successfully advocating for inclusion of streetlighting in those contract negotiations. This effort is ongoing and depends upon participation of VEPGA members, whose officials and staff often have little knowledge of their VEPGA membership or of VEPGA’s functions.   We have prepared communication tools to share with representatives of VEPGA’s members explaining the significance of the current contract negotiations and the critical opportunity to influence the quality of streetlighting for the next twenty years.  For more information, please contact Laura Greenleaf at virginia@darksky.org

The Virginia Responsible Streetlighting Coalition comprises advocates from Northern Virginia, Richmond, Norfolk, the central Piedmont including Charlottesville, and the central Shenandoah Valley and Allegheny Highlands.  Member organizations include DarkSky Virginia, Citizens for Responsible Lighting, Piedmont Dark Skies, Northern Virginia Bird Alliance, and DarkSky NOVA.