A nearly century-old lighthouse that sits three-fourths of a mile in the water off the Delaware coast needs a new home, and fast.
Advocates for the Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse say if they can鈥檛 find a new place to put it, it鈥檚 a matter of when and not if it will fall into the ocean.
The lighthouse sits right on the line where the Delaware Bay feeds into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Cape Henlopen in Lewes.
Giant rocks were used to help form an underwater wall of sorts in the late 1800s and early 1900s to provide extra support for the 76-foot-tall structure.鈥淭he breakwater upon which it sits is gradually sliding into a large scour hole about 140 feet deep, right at the end of the wall itself,鈥� said Ron Parks, the president of the Delaware River and Bay Lighthouse Foundation. 鈥淥ver time, obviously, we don’t know how quickly, but depending on how storms, hurricanes come up the coast, it could very easily jeopardize the structure.鈥�
The lighthouse is situated on a 40-foot-wide caisson that sits atop the wall of rocks. But the more those rocks keep moving underwater, the more likely that lighthouse is to eventually tip over.
鈥淭here are actually places where the rocks have fallen off the wall and down into the hole,鈥� Parks said.
It鈥檚 dangerous enough that members of the public can no longer tour the lighthouse anymore.
鈥淭here’s nothing we can do to prevent it because the (Army) Corps of Engineers maintains and is responsible for that rock wall,鈥� Parks said. 鈥淎ll we can do is maintain the lighthouse structure itself.鈥�
That maintenance costs thousands of dollars a year. Repairing the rock wall, Parks said, comes with an estimated cost of $90 million to $120 million. But for $4 million to $7 million, the lighthouse could be dismantled and transported onto land. He said boaters have made clear they don鈥檛 want to see it moved to land.
The problem is, after the city of Lewes recently said no to relocating the structure there, no one else seems willing to take it either.
鈥淚f there’s a threat to its existence, then the only way that we can guarantee its future is to put into place a plan and then execute it to guarantee that it will still stand,鈥� Parks said.
鈥淲e’re really at the mercy of the community to, in effect, help us come up with a place to so that it can have a permanent location,鈥� Parks said.
鈥淏ut if you’re going to restore it, you certainly want to be able to let the public have access to it as almost a museum for that kind of maritime heritage and history,鈥� he continued. 鈥淪o it would require parking or some kind of egress to it, and just like many of the other lighthouses that have been restored, there’s usually some sort of a keeper’s cottage where administration would happen or there’d be some sort of a gift shop.鈥�
鈥淚t鈥檚 not just the lighthouse itself,鈥� he admitted.
As if the situation isn鈥檛 complex enough, the lighthouse is also still in operation. It鈥檚 a navigational beacon in the Delaware Bay waters, so the Coast Guard also has some say over its future.
鈥淭hey operate the light and the foghorn and the solar panels and the batteries that make it go,鈥� Parks said. 鈥淲e own the building, the structure itself. So we would have to come to some kind of a compromise whereby we would move it after they had erected some sort of a tower or replacement for the light itself.”
鈥淚t’s kind of a complicated situation and we knew that it was going to involve many players, many separate conversations going on simultaneously,鈥� he added. 鈥淏ut we have to start with just the vision, just the idea, and why it matters, in order to bring the community up to speed. Then we can hopefully draw together a coalition of individuals, organizations, administrations, perhaps within the city or the county government, and also the Delaware Historical Society.鈥�
Finding a way to preserve the Harbor of Refuge lighthouse, as difficult as that is, isn鈥檛 an insurmountable problem to solve, Parks said. But he knows there鈥檚 only so much time to come up with the right solution.
鈥淭he next big storm could certainly damage the wall even further,鈥� he explained. 鈥淚’m hesitant to suggest that kind of an immediate threat. But on the other hand, it’s irrefutable that the wave action from storms and the ongoing tidal motion has had the effect on the wall that the Corps of Engineers is reporting.”
鈥淚t’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when,鈥� he said.
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