Is your outdoor lighting too loud?

Sitting at Carol Jacobs’ dining room table, one can see an expansive view of Mille Lacs Lake from her large windows. Her house sits along the shoreline near Father Hennepin State Park, and the magnificent view was one of the things that led her and her husband, John Gilbert, to purchase the property. Malone Island’s shoreline accents the horizon, and the Jacobs often enjoying sitting around a campfire near the water, taking in the night sky. But over the years she said they’ve increasingly noticed that much of the horizon glares at them from unshielded outdoor lights reaching across the lake and in to their yard. This got Jacobs wondering why these lights were shining outward, rather than down, directly on what they were intending to illuminate.