Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Newspaper Articles

Reprinted by permission of The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina

October 18, 1998

The News & Observer

A rescue at the speed of lighthouse

By Ned Glascock AND Jerry Allegood; Staff Writers

Page: B1

After years of sparring over how to preserve the imperiled Cape Hatteras lighthouse, the candy-striped guardian of the Outer Banks shoreline may soon begin a tortuously slow retreat from the Atlantic waves that threaten to swallow it.

On Tuesday, Congress is expected to approve - and President Clinton to sign into law - a 1999 budget bill that includes $9.8 million to lift the 4,800-ton lighthouse off its foundation and inch it to safety, 1,600 feet from the pounding surf.

Preparations to move the 208-foot lighthouse, the tallest in America, would begin early next year after the National Park Service approves a contract. The move itself would last up to five months.

Supporters, including Republican U.S. Sen. Lauch Faircloth, say the plan is the best way to ensure that the 128-year-old lighthouse will be around for future generations. Today, waves wash within 120 feet of a symbol so cherished that it is immortalized even on North Carolina driver's licenses and license plates.

"Our choice is this: Move the lighthouse or move the ocean," Faircloth said Saturday in a written response to questions from The News & Observer. "The experts believe we stand a better chance of saving this North Carolina treasure by carefully moving the lighthouse further inland to protect it from storms and erosion."

Yet, the inclusion of the lighthouse provision in the congressional budget agreement Thursday has done nothing to end the long-running debate over the lighthouse's future.

Those who propose keeping the lighthouse where it stands and instead building up the beach in front remain deeply skeptical of any plan to move it. Critics of the plan insist the building probably would crumble in the process.

Hugh Morton of Linville, chairman of the Save Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Committee, said the group will meet next week to plot strategy. One idea: lobby the president and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt not to spend the money allocated for moving the lighthouse.

Morton, developer of Grandfather Mountain, launched into Faircloth for pushing the relocation proposal through Congress, charging that the senator was trying to sway voters who are not natural allies in the Nov. 3 election.

"He's catering to the environmental extremists, hoping to get some of their votes," Morton said in a telephone interview Saturday. "Just because some of the extremists in the environmental movement support moving the lighthouse, he thinks he's going to get rich all in one day with them, but he won't."

Faircloth said Morton couldn't be more off base.

"The politically safe position would be to leave it alone," Faircloth said in a statement, "but I have a responsibility to do the right thing so our children can one day enjoy the Cape Hatteras lighthouse."

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones Jr., a Republican whose district includes the Outer Banks, said in a phone interview Saturday he is disappointed that the lighthouse provision made it into the 7,000-page budget bill. He is among those who advocate building another groin to supplement three already there.

Groins - sand-trapping sea walls - are designed to build up the beach in front of the lighthouse. However, state regulations now prohibit new seawalls and other so-called shoreline-hardening measures at ocean beaches.

### Neighbors fear risk: Supporters say the groin could give the Cape Hatteras lighthouse an extra 25 to 30 years at the same spot where it was built in 1870, then 1,600 feet from the ocean.

"The attempt to move the lighthouse is extremely risky and dangerous," he said. "I listened to the people of that area, who have grown up with that lighthouse, who don't want to see it moved because they don't think it can be moved safely."

However, officials with International Chimney Co. - hired in June to draw up engineering plans for relocating the lighthouse - think otherwise. Despite cracks in the lighthouse's structure, recent engineering tests indicate that the masonry is solid and the tower is stable, said Joe Jakubik, the company's project manager.

"It's a very strong structure," he said Saturday from company headquarters in Buffalo, N.Y.

Design work is on schedule, he said, and the move could begin early next year.

It will be a massive job. The Cape Hatteras lighthouse is larger by far than the three others the company has relocated - the only other lighthouses ever moved in the United States. They were Massachusetts' Cape Cod and Nauset lighthouses in 1996 and the Block Island lighthouse in Rhode Island in 1993.

### A barely noticeable move: The first task on Hatteras will take several months: preparing a roadway of gravel to replace the loose sand on the surface of the projected route. While the lighthouse will be set down 1,600 feet from the ocean, the whole trip will cover 2,900 feet, Jakubik said.

Next, workers will excavate the building's foundation, insert steel beams and a support frame under its granite base and slowly lift the whole structure, using more than 100 hydraulic jacks.

Then they will lower the lighthouse onto steel rails, place it onto a gravel roadway and gradually push it horizontally with jacks.

The move itself will proceed at a snail's pace, taking four to five months, Jakubik said. The slow slide along the jacks will be almost imperceptible to onlookers.

"You can look at it," Jakubik said, "and it doesn't seem to be moving, and later it has been moved four or five feet."

Ultimately, if all goes well, the only difference with the Cape Hatteras lighthouse will be its new vantage point at the edge of the sea.

"What you see now is what you'll see when we're done," Jakubik said.

Section: News
Edition: Final
Estimated Printed Pages: 4

Index Terms:
Cape Hatteras
NC
coast
budget
environment

Caption:
c photo; file

It would take up to five months to move the 4,800-ton tower 1,600 feet from the surf. Today, the ocean is within 120 feet of the 128-year-old landmark, which critics fear is too fragile to be moved. The company hired to draw up plans disagrees.

Copyright 1998 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.

Record Number: 1998290169