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By Kym Reinstadle
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Thanks to American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding, Muskegon County is putting out a request for proposals for new high-efficiency lighting at its Heritage Landing waterfront park. PHOTO: JOE BOOMGAARD

MUSKEGON — Muskegon’s magnum opus of an urban waterfront park, Heritage Landing, soon will be getting greener.

Light fixtures atop the teal lamp posts at Heritage Landing will be retrofitted this spring with new energy-efficient lights, although the county has not yet decided what kind.

The Office of Sustainability is bidding out the project in January with either induction lights or LEDs. County workers believe the bids will compare the cost, performance, efficiency and longevity of each technology in a way that illuminates the best choice.

“Either way, we calculate we’ll save the county about $10,000 per year in energy expenditures and maintenance costs,” said Leslee Rohs, the county’s sustainability coordinator. “Either is about 50 percent more efficient, and provides a cleaner, crisper quality of light than what we have now.”

The lighting upgrade at Heritage Landing is being funded mostly through a $36,000 Advanced Lighting Technology Demonstration grant — part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Since all stimulus funds must be spent by June 30, 2012, Rohs said this project must go on a fast track. That’s a good thing, she said, because Heritage Landing will have better and cheaper lights for the Unity Christian Music Festival, the Michigan Irish Music Festival and the dozens of other events it hosts over the warm months.

The Muskegon Lake park, which was also home to the now defunct Muskegon Summer Celebration, currently has a combination of high-pressure sodium and metal halide fixtures. Over time, their light diminishes to amber glow and they emit use more energy — which results in more carbon dioxide emissions.

Modern fixtures usually deliver better lighting with less emissions and at significantly less cost, which is why the Recovery Act included $2.4 billion to upgrade lighting in high-profile public sites.

Rohs and Judy Keil, the county’s grant writer, wrote a proposal for induction lights, which was not among the 14 proposals the Michigan Energy Office chose to fund last summer.

The Michigan Energy Office notified six more municipalities, including Muskegon, last fall that their grants would be funded after all with leftover stimulus money.

“We were floored, but happy,” Rohs said.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant portion of the Recovery Act allows projects that include induction, LED and plasma lighting. Switching its proposal from induction to LED lights would not violate terms of the grant, Rohs said.

The county is required to pay 10 percent of the project, an estimated $16,000.

Because of the rapid improvement and steadily decreasing cost of LED technology, county officials decided to take a second look at that technology, Rohs said.

“Induction lighting is an older, proven technology,” Rohs said, “but it almost seems like LED is the future of interior and exterior lighting.”

Rohs didn’t think the new lights the county is considering were currently being manufactured in Michigan.

Installing state-of-the-art lamps on the old posts will not be easy, especially since a lot of old wiring will have to be removed first, Rohs said.

New lighting at Heritage Landing — once an abandoned industrial brown field — will complement shoreline redevelopment efforts at Muskegon Lake, Rohs said. Throughout Muskegon’s history, Muskegon Lake was the focal point of lumbering and manufacturing.

More recent efforts aim to reclaim the lakefront for recreational and residential use.