Shawnee County, KS Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

Sec. 17(12) of Article XXVI, Division 2 (Communication Towers) states that towers "shall not be lighted except to insure public safety as required by the Federal Aviation Administration," and that any FAA-required lighting must consist of a white flashing light during the day and a red flashing light at night. Separately, the section allows security lighting around the base of a tower, but only "if the lighting is shielded so that no light is directed towards adjacent properties or rights-of-way," the county's clearest dark-sky-style shielding standard.

This sits inside a broader set of siting rules adopted to protect "the community's aesthetic resources and the public welfare" (Sec. 16), which also require towers to be screened at the base with a six-foot solid fence (Sec. 17(13)) and sited to have "the least practical adverse visual effect on the environment" (Sec. 17(14)). These lighting and screening standards attach to the conditional use permit or provisional use approval a tower operator must obtain before construction; the planning director and planning commission review the development plan under Sec.

17(1). Because the rule is written specifically for communication towers and their accessory security lighting rather than general outdoor or commercial lighting county-wide, it does not create a blanket dark-sky ordinance for houses, businesses or parking lots, but it is the operative shielding standard for any tower sited in unincorporated Shawnee County, and non-FAA lighting or unshielded base lighting is treated as a deviation from the approved development plan subject to the county's standard zoning enforcement.