Lombardy law passed the test of the time

[Jan Hollan <jhollan@amper....muni.cz>]

With my really poor Italian, I've noticed there is very good news from
Lombardy. A generous Christmas gift!

The famous law LR17/00 (from 2000) has been amended by LR 38/04
to serve even better to stop and reduce the growth of pollution of the
night environment.

What's really important: after more than four years, none of the basic
principles of the law had to be changed. As Diego Bonata writes, this is
an ultimate proof that the tremendous success from 2000 was not a matter
of some extremists fooling the Assembly. Instead, it is the mainstream
opinion of responsible citizens with enough information on the issue,
after experiencing the workings of the world's best regulation in
practice.

The amendment increases the scope and power of the anti-pollution
legislation and makes it more detailed. From my view, the most important
is inclusion of areas of nature protection among sites with more
protection, in addition to the surroundings of astronomical observatories.
Measures to reduce glare on streets from another sources then just the
streetlights are a very good idea too.

The new law was accepted unanimously by all parties, major and minor ones.
There is a complete political consensus on this issue in this province
with 10 million inhabitants. No country, region, city or village is to be
shy to accept the same rules.

All info is available on
                         http://cielobuio.org.
 In Italian, of course. I beg English or American readers, who understand
Italian, to make a translation of the document, so that it could
supplement the old English version of Visual Regolamento.

(This should be a proven, effective and non-controversial base for MLO, of
course. When most of the world's law is based on that of ancient Rome,
who shouldn't that on the protection of the night environment be based on
that of nowadays Lombardy?)

congratulations, my Italian friends!

jenik