Town of Kingsville looking to extinguish greenhouse ‘glow’

The Town of Kingsville is taking measures to lower the glow of greenhouses. Light pollution from greenhouses in Kingsville has been on the forefront of conversation for many brightly-lit nights and mornings in the community.

Deputy Mayor Gord Queen forwarded a motion to review rules for greenhouses complying lessen the impact of the artificial lighting.

The glow is a casting of pinkish-purple to yellow light into the air and is brought about by artificial sunlight greenhouses produce.

“To look out in the middle of the night and it’s almost as bright as day can be disorienting,” said Marissa Wingerden, a Kingsville resident. “You can’t even see the stars at night with the orange glow from the greenhouses.”

Some greenhouses are required to install blackout curtains and ceiling shades, limiting light from escaping the greenhouses into the environment.

Robert Brown, manager of planning and development services with the Town of Kingsville, pointed to two main agricultural sectors which utilize grow lights.

“Tomatoes usually, but we also have a strawberry greenhouse that uses lights,” Brown said. “Cannabis will be a big light user when it comes online.”

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Essex County had more than 84 million square feet in greenhouse space in 2016, which made up more than half of all greenhouse space in Ontario. Kingsville has just over 42 million square feet, roughly half of Essex’s total and almost 27 per cent of all the province’s. 

While Kingsville has over a quarter of the provinces greenhouse space in 2016 there was only 65 farms which fell under the greenhouse, nursery and floriculture industry group. These only make up three per cent of the total number of Ontario farms within the business group.

According to Brown there are generally no fines in place for greenhouses which don’t put up their curtain however he said they try to address it in the planning stages.

“We are trying to control light use through site plan approval and the associated agreement which requires dark sky compliance in older agreements,” Brown said. “In new agreements it specially requires the use of black out curtains.”

The Town of Kingsville says they hope the use of blackout curtains will minimize the amount of visible light. The greenhouse light is visible from outside of the community as well. The lights are visible all the way from Belle River to Grosse Pointe, Mich.