Bright blights

Sometimes it’s not hard to envision what the Nevada landscape would look like after the apocalypse—an empty desert filled with decaying roads and crumbling billboards. Perhaps that’s more evocative of the video game Fallout: New Vegas than reality, but Nevada is no stranger to flashy lights and signs embedded into its cities and along the highways, and Reno soon may have an influx of digital billboards—against the wishes of the community.

Digital billboards are billboards with electronic displays, projecting images or video clips. In 2000, 57 percent of residents voted in a ballot initiative against the construction of new billboards, but 12 years later, plans are underway to resurrect what environmental group Scenic Nevada refers to as “garish digital displays.” The initiative stated, “The construction of new off premises advertising displays/billboards is prohibited, and the city of Reno may not issue permits for their construction.”

“That didn’t mean just digital boards, but existing ones as well,” says Lori Wray, board member of Scenic Nevada. “That meant that billboards already built could be used, but no new ones could be built. And now they are going against that.”

In 2008, Councilmember Dwight Dortch began an initiative to add a text amendment and allow for digital billboards. The city hosted a workshop later that year, but the motion didn’t get very far. The Council took the item off of the planning commission’s agenda in 2009.

“After 2009, it sat dormant, but in 2011, it started heating up again,” Wray says.

An appeal was filed last month after the planning commission voted 4-2 for the development of new billboard zones. Current legislation only allows billboards in commercial and industrial areas, and the boards have to be spaced at least 1,000 feet apart. A public hearing was held on Feb. 8.

“We believe this is a violation of the voters’ trust and what the voters wanted,” Wray says. “We wanted less billboards and not more.”

Several studies conducted on the boards have indicated that the digital ones are a safety hazard for drivers because they can make it harder to see headlights on cars or cyclists. Too many could potentially violate the Dark Night Sky act, which limits the amount of light that can be emitted by a city.

“There is, in the code right now, that no lights can flash out from the billboards,” says Wray. “That’s what it does, and that’s why they are prohibited in Reno.”

Digital billboards are notorious for requiring a lot of power to function 24/7, and environmentalists argue that the components used to make them will end up as electronic waste. Some cities have proposed poweing the boards with renewable energy sources such as solar or wind power, or constructing them out of recycled materials.

Utah is also working to ban digital billboards, which have already come under heavy restriction in tourism-dependent states Alaska and Hawaii. The Reno-Tahoe area is in the top 35 markets for Clear Channel’s digital boards, which owns 34 out of the 50 permits for billboards in Reno.