Rising sea levels and erosion threaten historic lighthouses

MAURICE RIVER TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Rising seas and erosion are threatening lighthouses around the U.S. and the world. Volunteers and cash-strapped governments are doing what they can, but the level of concern, like the water, is rising.

New Jersey’s East Point Lighthouse has been lighting up Delaware Bay for the better part of two centuries. But those same waters that the lighthouse helped illuminate might bring about its demise.

With even a moderate term fix likely to cost $3 million or more, New Jersey officials are considering what to do to save the lighthouse. Nancy Patterson, president of the Maurice River Historical Society, says something needs to be done now.

State and local governments routinely shore up the perimeter of the lighthouse property with 3,000-pound sand bags and hastily bulldozed earthen walls. During normal conditions, the bay is about 40 yards from the lighthouse; aerial photos from 1940 show at least four times as much beach between the lighthouse and the bay as there is now.

And during storms, the surf pounds against an earthen wall just 10 yards from the lighthouse’s front steps.

“This lighthouse is in incredible danger; it’s getting worse and worse and worse,” Patterson said. “The water is right there, often within feet of the lighthouse.”

She recently led a save-the-light-house rally to call attention to its plight and push the state Department of Environmental Protection to do something to save it before it falls into the bay.

It’s a threat affecting lighthouses around the country and the world, including those in lowlying areas being inundated by water, as well as those on bluffs or cliffs being eroded by storms and rising sea levels.

“It’s happening faster than anybody had predicted,” said Jeff Gales, executive director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society in Hansville, Washington.

While some of the lighthouses continue to be relied upon for navigation, others have been supplanted by more modern technology, and are treasured more for historical and tourism purposes.

Climate change hastened by manmade greenhouse gases is not only melting polar ice, adding to sea levels, but the warmer waters are expanding and some land formations are sinking.

Globally, sea levels have been rising over the past century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In New Jersey, seas have risen by 1.3 feet over the past 100 years, said Benjamin Horton, a Rutgers University professor and leading expert on climate change and sea level rise. That is a faster pace than for the past 2,000 years combined, he said.

Horton and other Rutgers researchers project that by 2050, seas off New Jersey will rise by an additional 1.4 feet.

Tim Harrison is the editor of Lighthouse Digest, a Maine-based publication that maintains a “Doomsday List” of 53 lighthouses around the U.S. deemed to be in danger of being lost due to storms, erosion or other causes.

“Lighthouses were built for one purpose: to save lives,” he said. “Now it’s our turn to step up and save these lighthouses.”

Rising seas have already forced the relocation of several lighthouses. In 1999, the National Park Service moved the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton, North Carolina, 2,900 feet inland, at a cost of $11.8 million. In 1993, the Southeast Lighthouse on Block Island, Rhode Island, was moved 300 feet