By VICKI URBANIK

Liberty Township resident Rosemary Green said her bedroom is strobed by a bright pulsating light all night. Neighbor Phillip Doolittle said he’s installed five sets of blinds but still can’t sleep because of the strobe and can’t have guests overnight because of the nuisance.

The Porter County Plan Commission heard such input Wednesday before unanimously recommending a proposed new ordinance that would ban white strobe lights during the night-time hours on all new and existing communications towers in Porter County. Unless specifically required by the Federal Aviation Administration, the towers would have to switch to a red light at night, under the ordinance.

The proposed ordinance was prompted by complaints in Liberty Township’s Long Lake area, where residents including Green and Doolittle say they have dealt with the nonstop strobe lights every night since last November, when the lighting system went out on the nearby tower off Ind. 49.

The Porter County Commissioners recently endorsed the ordinance, but the measure first needed a recommendation from the plan commission. At the recommendation of County Commissioner and plan commission president Robert Harper, the planners agreed to bypass the normal wait before sending the ordinance to the commissioners for final approval. The commissioners will now take up the measure this Tuesday.

Doolittle said it may sound like having a strobe light on a nearby tower isn’t a big deal. But he noted that strobes can trigger epileptic seizures. “This is not a little issue,” he said.

According to Doolittle, the light malfunctioned on the nearby tower about eight years ago and was promptly fixed. It malfunctioned again in 2002, and was fixed in about six days. But last November, it malfunctioned and started the non-stop strobe lighting that hasn’t stopped since.

Doolittle said there are towers that have a white strobe at night-time that are properly working, so that the impact isn’t as great. He said he wouldn’t want to restrict those towers if their strobe isn’t posing a problem for others.

Porter County Plan Commission Executive Director Robert Thompson said his department encourages people impacted to file a complaint with the FAA. The plan commission has already done so in the Liberty Township case, he said. After Green questioned the effectiveness of filing the complaints, Harper noted that with the new ordinance, Porter County isn’t going to depend on the FAA to take corrective action.

Under the new ordinance, the county wouldn’t impose an actual penalty, but if there is a violation, it would seek a court ruling to require the switch to the red light. If the tower owner doesn’t make the switch, then the county would seek court approval to do so on its own and then seek reimbursement.

Posted 4/10/2008