Montauk Lighthouse Rocks: Better Than Diamonds
By Sue Clark on Dec 31, 2007 in Opinion, Restoration 
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The Most Expensive Rocks Anywhere
Our previous story was about New Point Comfort Lighthouse and the $750,000 rock job. Well, that pales in comparison to what it’s expected to cost at Montauk Point Lighthouse in New York to do almost the same thing. The full amount being budgeted for masonry work at the base of the lighthouse, and the revetment replacement that has helped stop erosion for the past 15 years? A cool $15 million dollars. The lighthouse will get $7.1 million from the federal government, $5.6 million from the state and about $2 million from the Montauk Historical Society, which owns and operates the lighthouse. The federal money is being appropriated as part of the 2007 Water Bill, which covers coastal projects, drainage and other water related items.
And how is this money being spent? According to a story in the Daily News, part of the $15 million will be used to upgrade the 28,000 tons of armor rocks that now comprise the revetment, which protects the lighthouse from the pounding surf. “We’ll be getting a new engineering plan that will provide a more adequate, nonmoving foundation, especially for the southeast corner, which is the weakest part of the revetment,” said Greg Donohue, erosion control director and a member of the Lighthouse Committee. “It will also have a more proper slope angle that will allow the waves to dissipate without taking away land.”
Trucking In Stones To Replace The Old
The funds also will be used to buy and truck in new stones, set them in place and to construct a new revetment, and pay a crew of about a dozen workers to install them. A revetment is the facing built of stones that you can see in the photo at the top, if you click on it to enlarge it, at the base of the light. These originally were put in place in 1992, and have prevented erosion from wind and waves. The original revetment has prevented further land loss, but according to Donohue, it has grown unstable.
A Comparison To New Comfort Point
New Comfort Point’s caretakers and Matthew County is only spending $750,000 to shore up their lighthouse land. Although that sounded like a lot it pales in comparison to the amount planned for Montauk. And all of New Comfort Point’s money will come from fund raising and private grants, not tacked onto a federal bill. The photo to the right shows the more dire crisis that New Point Comfort faces. Itsbase has shrunk to little more than a quarter acre, about the size of a city lot. And it is in dire need of interior and exterior work.
Split The Funding
These two cases, so very similar and yet so far removed from each other, highlights problems with our current methods of restoring our lighthouses. One, in dire need of repair before Mobjack Bay surrounds it completely gets no federal funding, and another, up above the water, already protected, gets twenty times (yes, that’s 20 times) more money. What is the difference between the two? Each is deserving of protection. Is it because Montauk Point is the fourth oldest lighthouse in the country? Well, New Point Comfort is the fourth one built on Chesapeake Bay and is the second oldest one still remaining. How many more lighthouses have to be threatened before we sit up and realize every single one is equal in value.
Monies from the federal government should be split among all the needy lighthouses, starting with the most threatened. And at this point, New Point Comfort can carry that (unwanted) title a little more heavily than Montauk Point.
Photo Credits:
- New Point Comfort Lighthouse Copyright 2007 by glistensound on Flickr All Rights Reserved (used with permission).
- Montauk Point Lighthouse by abphoto48 on Flickr (Creative Commons License)
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More About High Cost of Rocks
- Wanted: Rocks For Lighthouse
- Montauk Lighthouse Rocks: Better Than Diamonds
