HEBER CITY, Utah — Debate surrounding a proposed temple site for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taken center stage at recent Wasatch County planning commission meetings.
The church is aiming to build an 88,000-square-foot building on an 18-acre lot on East Center Street in Heber City, rising around 200 feet and which would be illuminated at night.
It has brought up the topic of light in the night sky in the community.
“It’s primarily parks and preservation land. It’s beautiful. We can still see the constellations, the stars and the galaxies at night. And we want to keep it that way,” said Lisa Bahash.
Bahash is the co-founder of a group called "Save Wasatch Back Dark Skies," which formed as a result of the proposed Heber Valley Temple and new Wasatch County light codes.
“You’ll see there isn’t a building over 35 feet, it’s a rural residential area that’s agricultural and it’s just out of place,” said Bahash, “Unfortunately it will also be uplit, and that will create a tremendous amount of light pollution.”
For the first time in 20 years, Wasatch County changed the rules for lighting.
“Previously Wasatch County only had a very simple dark sky standard in that we regulated the direction someone could place their lighting, they could only point it downwards, but we didn’t regulate when they could do it, at what volumes they could do it either,” explained County Manager Devin Grabau.
Grabau said the county hired a consultant to look at all options from least strict to most strict on lighting regulations.
“We kind of ended up picking a middle path but I think something that also matched the community’s needs,” he said, “Just because the direction of the lighting is pointed down doesn’t mean that there’s less light.”
He said the new code is more complicated, measuring the amount of brightness that comes off a facade of a building, but he thinks it will ultimately pollute the sky with less light.
“If you are shining [light] on a mirror, that’s going to be very different from if you’re shining it on a black piece of felt,” he said, “And so, by measuring the reflective value, that’s the candela measure that we’ve set we stet a maximum candela measure.”
He said there is more to it, with the amount of lumens per acre of a developed property that the owner can meet, and certainly exemptions like public safety buildings.
Bahash said she disagrees with this choice when it comes to light pollution, and said she felt like it was catered to the church’s new temple.
“We really feel that this was rushed, primarily because of who the applicant was, as well as preserving the night skies which would be consistent with the county’s general plan,” said Bahash.
On the flip side, Grabau said reviewing the former codes was due anyways.
“While the temple I think was the impetus behind why we started the change, there were already discussions going along,” said Grabau, “Heber City recently adopted dark sky code changes, this was I think in 2021 and that kind of spurred a discussion of well Wasatch County, we would really like to come into closer alignment with what Heber City was doing.”
He said they are going through the approval process for the development the same way they would with any other project.
“I don’t want people to have the perception that the county is treating this applicant differently than we would any other religious institution,” he said, “I think we’ve been very careful to be cognizant of the fact that any decisions we make that affect the county affect all of the county and not just this project and that we are treating this application the same as we would treat a Catholic Church or a Jewish synagogue or a Muslim mosque.”
Bahash said the group is not against the church building a temple in Wasatch County, but they would like to see it built somewhere else.
“Save Wasatch Back Dark Skies does not oppose a temple in the area. Of course we know where we live and how important the faith is to the state,” she said, “We do not oppose that. We believe there’s a better location in the valley and or a better building design.”
As of now, Save Wasatch Back Dark Skies has proposed amendments suggesting increased public comment in the approval process of buildings like the temple, which the county commissioners agreed in a 4-1 vote to continue considering.
