THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 24, 1994 TAG: 9409240223
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BUXTON LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Move it or lose it.
That's what a national panel of scientists and engineers told Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials in 1989. A second federal committee of experts echoed that mandate three years later.
By all accounts, the nation's tallest lighthouse should long since have tumbled into the sea.
But the 208-foot tower is still standing - in the same spot.
For now.
Surging surf tugged at the thousands of sandbags piled around its granite foundation this week. Windsurfers flipped off waves about 300 feet from its octagonal base.
Less than 150 feet of beach protects the black-striped Cape Hatteras Lighthouse from the Atlantic Ocean.
About 14 1/2 feet of sand wash away each year.
``The danger is pretty bad right now,'' National Park Service engineer Charlie Snow said Wednesday. ``They warned us. They've been talking about moving it now for years.
``From the air, it looks really scary.''
Next week, construction crews will begin rebuilding one of three sheetpile groins erected in the ocean to save a former Navy base nearby - and the lighthouse. The groin has deteriorated in the 24 years since its installation. The $356,000 repair should be completed in December.
By spring, Snow and Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Tom Hartman said they hope workers might begin work on a fourth groin, about 500 feet south of the southernmost one. The sheetpile breakwater would be perpendicular to the shoreline, parallel to the existing groins, and would further shield the tower from erosion. The estimated cost is $1.5 million.
``We're doing a good job now with interim protection measures,'' Hartman said last week. ``We're going to keep it up.
``We're not going to lose this lighthouse.''
Money to move it, however, is hard to find.
Sliding the beacon 2,500 feet to the southwest - while keeping it upright on trolleys - would require $1.4 million for planning alone. The entire move could cost more than $8.8 million. Hartman said he'll ask for the engineering funds in 1996.
Meanwhile, Congress has doled out millions of dollars for Band-Aids: three sand-pumping beach nourishment projects since 1966; construction, upkeep and repair of three groins; thousands of sand bags; planting grass and financing dozens of planning studies.
``If the future of the lighthouse is to be assured, we recommend that the moving process be under way by the fall of 1994,'' three university scientists and William Dennis of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wrote in a 1992 report.
``We made the decision to move it in 1985. But we've been through Bosnia, Somalia, Panama, Haiti and Cuba since then. We're all competing for the same federal funds, you know,'' Hartman said. ``Military and Park Service.
``When the perception of losing the lighthouse becomes greater than the risk of moving it, that's when we'll really have to move.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by DREW C. WILSON/
Next week, workers will begin rebuilding one of three breakwaters
that reduce beach erosion around the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on the
Outer Banks in Buxton.
KEYWORDS: LIGHTHOUSE NORTH CAROLINA EROSION by CNB