Dan's Papers - August 1, 2008

The fate of the Montauk Lighthouse is taking another turn as the Town of East Hampton has agreed to take ownership of a strip of land on which more buffering work will be done to secure a stable revetment along the base.

This narrow piece of land, measuring about 500 feet long and 50 feet wide, is located around the Point, which has eroded about 180 feet toward the base of the lighthouse since it was first ordered to be built by President George Washington in 1796. This strip of land is now owned by the Montauk Historical Society, which oversees the maintenance of the lighthouse.

By taking title to this strip of land, the Town of East Hampton will not incur any cost, but the transfer of title will allow the historical society to share in the $14 million cost of the project, and negate a 68-year-old law that was preventing this project from moving ahead.

Although the total cost of the work will be shared among the state and federal governments and the Historical Society, the $5 million state share was being held up due to a 1945 state regulation prohibiting a state agency from sharing the cost of shoreline protection with nongovernmental entities, such as the historical society. But by placing it into town ownership, this old ruling will no longer apply. The Montauk Historical Society has also agreed to contribute $2 million to this erosion project, and, in addition, they will be able to cost share with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Betsy White, President of the Montauk Historical Society, said she was pleased with this cooperative venture. Greg Donohue, a member of the society and the erosion control expert at the Montauk Lighthouse, said he also thought it was a "great partnership."

"We had run into technicalities from this old state law, so we couldn't move forward with our erosion control goals as a non-federal, cost-sharing partner," he said. "But now we are happy that the Town of East Hampton stood up and did the right thing. It was a very generous act."

Donohue, who has been diligently working on several erosion control efforts at the lighthouse for decades, explained that of the $14 million project, about half will be paid by the federal government, and they expect about $5 million to be paid by the state. The local cost share of $2 million will come from the Historical Society.

Donohue said there is about 800 feet of rock revetment at the base of the lighthouse "slipping and moving about in the mud" that needs to be stabilized.

"We need to correct this problem, and for the first time, get it stabilized the proper way, with slope angles and anchors," he said. "The foundation is weak, and needs to be improved." He said another flaw is that the over-wash could come up above sea level, and that the revetment needs to be built higher, to get slope angles into the range of 25-35 feet above sea level.

But not all parties are happy about this new agreement. The Surfrider Foundation, comprised of over 50,000 surfers and others who work to protect the world's oceans and beaches, has been opposed to the rock revetment idea all along, and favor instead the relocating of the Montauk Lighthouse further inland by the parking lot.

Chris Manthey, a Surfrider volunteer of Montauk, said he thinks the proposed new revetment stabilization might not work in a big hurricane.

"Similar to Hurricane Katrina, where the levies weren't big enough to hold back the tide, this may not work here," he said. "In the core study the engineers used in this lighthouse project was a period of time when there weren't any major hurricanes here."

Manthey said his group also feels that putting rocks around the lighthouse cliff keeps it from eroding, but also prevents sand from replenishing the beaches further west, like Ditch Plains.

"This Point is a source of sand for all beaches, and we think it would be better if they moved the lighthouse farther back so they didn't need this revetment at all, and that these cliffs could just erode naturally," he said.

Manthey said lighthouses have safely been moved before, and that relocating the Montauk Lighthouse onto the state parkland near the parking lot would be better for everyone.

"Where we can relocate structures, rather than put up walls, we should," said Manthey.

But Donohue said he thinks the Surfriders "have come up with a lot of misinformation and innuendos, and much of their claims are erroneous. They're on a campaign to stop our erosion control at the lighthouse."

He said if the agreement between governmental agencies gets signed, it would then need a design implementation, which would cost about $1 million and take about a year to complete. Then the project would go out to bid, and altogether, it would take about three years to see the completion of the stabilized rock revetment.