Water tower lights the way into Charles City

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A new beacon on the horizon draws nighttime attention to Charles City.

Members of the City Council, the mayor, other city staff and city officials, spouses and others gathered along Corporate Drive in the Southwest Development Park Wednesday evening to see the unveiling of the LED lighting system that has been installed to illuminate the newly repainted water tower, visible from the Avenue of the Saints that passes south of the area.

Mayor Dean Andrews called it another landmark.

“With so many neat things in our community, this is one more highlighting Charles City,” he said.

Water Treatment Plant Superintendent Cory Spieker said the pair of 80-LED lights arranged on opposite sides of the tower can produce “just about any color you can think of,” but right now they are set up for eight colors — including, in Charles City, of course, orange.

Musco Sports Lighting LLC of Oskaloosa provided the lighting system and set the initial parameters, and can make any changes requested remotely.

“You can just make a phone call and they can tweak it. If any of these colors you don’t necessarily like they can tweak it. Like if you want a different blue,” Spieker said.

The lights are operated wirelessly locally through a tablet or phone app, including turning them on and off and changing the programmed colors, and they also can be scheduled to turn off and on automatically, he said.

“In the program you can have it set to turn on at sunset and turn off at sunrise or you can set certain times,” he said.

The lights can also be timed to change colors, and Council member DeLaine Freeseman suggested having them cycle through red, white and blue for the Fourth of July holiday.

Spieker said that type of program change has to be done remotely by Musco, but it’s easy for them to set up and once created it can be turned on locally whenever wanted.

Council members joked about setting the lights for the colors of their favorite sports teams, but City Administrator Steve Diers said the city will need to come up with guidelines for what will be allowed and who can make those decisions.

“I feel a policy coming together already,” he said.

The City Council approved a $45,500 project in February to install the lights, with $28,000 of that going to Musco for the lights, poles, wire harnesses and control system, and $17,500 to Perry Novak Electrical of Charles City to set the poles in concrete, trench-in conduit and wire, run power, assemble the lights on the poles and wire everything up.

Musco is also the company that provided lights for the Charles City School District’s new baseball and softball fields, and the new lights for the football stadium.

The lights are warranted for 10 years materials and labor.