Amador County, CA Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass (2026)

Amador County does not have a dedicated light-trespass standard for the unincorporated area. The dark-sky lighting ordinance proposed in 2020 would have prohibited anyone's exterior lights from shining onto adjacent properties, but the Board of Supervisors rejected that ordinance on a 3-2 vote on August 11, 2020 (after the Planning Commission had approved it 4-1 in March 2020). Without that ordinance, there is no countywide rule that caps light spilling across property lines for ordinary residential or commercial fixtures. Limited shielding requirements do exist in the sign chapter: under Section 19.32.010, certain occupant-identification signs must be illuminated by 'external, shielded lighting only,' and bed-and-breakfast signs on smaller parcels must use a single non-flashing light source 'shielded from neighboring properties.' These are narrow sign-specific provisions, not a general light-trespass prohibition. Where light spillover becomes severe, a property owner's recourse is typically a private nuisance claim rather than a zoning citation, and permitted construction must still meet California's Title 24 lighting standards. Because Amador County is a dark rural Sierra foothill area, neighbors frequently raise light-spill concerns, but as of the rejected 2020 proposal the county had chosen not to adopt enforceable light-trespass standards for general outdoor lighting.