Sea, Legal Threat Endanger Historic Lighthouse

The Cape Hatteras lighthouse, a national landmark that is threatened by crushing seas and pocked by more than a century of gale-driven salt spray, may be in for its biggest blow yet, environmentalists said Saturday.

Dr. Robert Smythe, conservation coordinator for the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club, said his group may take the National Park Service to court if it persists in a plan to build a $5.7-million seawall around the 117-year-old structure to protect it from encroaching seas.

“The federal government should not violate its own coastal policy and that of the state of North Carolina by trying to fortify structures on the coast,” he said. “The result is always the loss of beaches as well as eventually the loss of the structure itself, given the inevitable rise in sea level.”

The lighthouse stands opposite the little Outer Banks town of Buxton, blinking its warning of treacherous Diamond Shoals, the graveyard of ships. But it has been closed to the public for the last several years because the salty air and spray have eaten away metal windows and railings and left chunks of rusted debris hanging precariously.

Offers Unforgetable View

In better days the estimated 1 million visitors who drop by each year to get a glimpse of the stately, old warning light were able--lung capacity permitting--to climb the 268 stone stairs to the top for an unforgettable view of Diamond Shoals, Pamlico Sound and the villages of Hatteras Island.

Studies on how to save the 208-foot-tall stone-and-brick tower have dragged on for five years. One group wants to move the lighthouse farther inland, another favors the seawall and still another suggests man should step aside and let nature take its course.

The Park Service, which has the final say, has been leaning toward the seawall plan, but last Tuesday William Mott, director of the National Park Service, and Robert M. Baker, regional director of the Park Service in Atlanta, said they wanted to convene an independent panel of experts to review plans for saving the lighthouse.

Mott and Baker said they intend to convene the panel within the next two weeks to “make certain we have adequately considered all the available information on options that have been suggested.”

Storms Erode Beach

Kent Turner, resource management specialist with the Park Service at Cape Hatteras, said punishing storms had claimed up to 150 feet of beach in front of the lighthouse this winter and the elevation of the remaining beach was lowered two to three feet.

The erosion, he said, left the beach in nearly as “alarming” a condition as in 1981.