A dispute over proposed commercial development at the foot of Mount Hopkins in southern Arizona threatens to end years of peaceful coexistence between astronomers and land developers in the state. Astronomers have opposed the project, fearing that light pollution will degrade viewing conditions at the Whipple Observatory, the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) and other facilities in the mountain. Fairfield Homes, a developer based in Green Valley, Arizona, wants to expand plans for low-density housing to include commercial development. It has threatened astronomers with a lawsuit if they continue to speak out against the project. Fairfield’s application for commercial development on the 5,200 acre Canoa Ranch site 20 miles south of Tucson was scheduled to go before a local board of supervisors at a public hearing this week. In a letter sent two days before Christmas, Frank Cassidy, an attorney for Fairfield, accused astronomers from the Whipple Observatory and other institutions of lobbying against the project "under the guise of providing scientific information". Cassidy claimed that, because the Smithsonian Institution observatories are publicly owned, interfering with Fairfield’s $900 million development could amount to a government "taking" of private property, for which opponents of the project would be liable. Cassidy’s letter threatened the institutions as well as individuals—including Robert firshner of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and MMT observatory director Craig Foltz with "appropriate legal action" unless they stopped their "lobbying" against the Canoa Ranoa Ranch application. His estimates were in some cases six to seven times higher than the developers, based on different assumptions about the types and amount of commercial lots that would produce. Frank Thomson, a planning consultant to Fairfield, says his client is sensitive to astronomers’ worries, and is committed to producing no more light pollution than would result from the already approved plan for 1,200 homes. But Luginbuhl and other astronomers say verbal promise counts for little. The issue will undoubtedly come up later this year when a committee representing both astronomers and developers, cochaired by Don Davis of the Tucson Planetary Science Institute, takes up the matter of revised lighting codes for the Tucson area, which also have been revised several times since being established in 1972. Thomson says it is "unfortunate" that tensions have escalated over Canoa Ranch after more than 10 years of astronomers and developers working out their differences in a friendlier way. But astronomers were irritated by what Smithsonian attorney James Wilson called Cassidy’s "inappropriate attempt to intimidate," and what a Tucson newspaper termed "Fairfield’s crude threat". Astronomers were annoyed by
A. the bitter dispute over Fairfield’s proposed commercial development.
B. the possible feature of pollution at the foot of Mount Hopkins.
C. Fairfield’s inappropriate attempt to threaten them.
D. the committee’s decision to revise lighting codes for the Tucson area.