Butte County, CA Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

1(D)(7), part of the Butte Creek Canyon overlay's Land Use and Development Standards, starts by incorporating the countywide Outdoor Lighting article, Chapter 24, Article 14 (Sections 24-62 through 24-70), which already requires residential fixtures to be shielded so no direct light crosses a property line. Subsection (b) then adds a canyon-specific requirement that the countywide article does not: outdoor lighting within the -BCC overlay must use full cut-off fixtures that direct light down onto buildings and outdoor activity areas while shielding off-site areas and the night sky, language aimed squarely at preserving dark skies over the canyon rather than just stopping light from crossing a neighbor's fence line.

This lighting standard sits inside a larger canyon-specific standards package: ridgeline development is pushed back 100 to 150 feet depending on building height, hillside development on slopes over fifteen percent is restricted, heavy equipment storage yards in the FR and RR zones must sit back one hundred feet from county roads and be screened, and impervious surface on new development is capped at fifteen percent of parcel size for lots one acre or larger. The overlay was adopted by Ordinance No. 4144 in 2018 and later amended by Ordinance No. 4189 in 2020, and it applies specifically to the Butte Creek Canyon area shown on the -BCC overlay zone map, not countywide.