OURAY – The mercury vapor streetlights that illuminate Ouray may soon be a thing of the past. Funding details are not yet finalized, but Ouray Mayor Bob Risch said the switch to energy-efficient lights could be made by early June.

Risch said the city has formed a partnership with San Miguel Power Association, Tri- State Generation and Transmission Association and Gov. Bill Ritter’s Energy Office to cover the costs of installing about 100 LED, or light-emitting diode, lights. Each partner will put up $15,000. The governor’s office has yet to give final approval for its share of the funding, but Risch said he felt sure it would come through.

Exactly how much the will be saved on energy is hard to say, Risch said, because San Miguel Power owns the lights on Ouray’s side streets while the city owns the lights on Main Street.

“Our savings just on Main Street alone will be about $5,000 a year,” he said.

Replacing the old lights has been a pet project of his for years.

“It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a long time,” Risch said. “The lighting is so old in Ouray and it’s unshielded. For anyone who likes the night sky, it’s an annoyance.”

The new lights will be more pleasing to the eye, he said, and will cast light downward and “not on the cliffs or in people’s bedrooms.”

The old mercury vapor lights are undesirable not only because they contain toxic mercury, he said, but because the lights are very inefficient.

“They were bright at first but dimmed with age, but they still consume a lot of energy,” he said.

Of the LED lights, Risch said, “It’s a new technology that’s moving very fast. They’re expensive, but less so now than a year ago, and now it has become affordable in our case.

“If all goes well, in late May or early June we should be in a position to do the changeover.”

Ouray may well be the first community in the state to go with all LED streetlights, Risch said, and certainly the first on the Western Slope. A recent article in USA Today reported that at least 30 cities across the country have asked for more than $104 million in federal stimulus funds to help make the change to LED streetlights. Pittsburgh, for example, is looking at a five-year, $25 million plan to replace 40,000 streetlights with LEDs.