Construction at Montauk Lighthouse in Montauk, N.Y. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District)
The new 874-ft.-tall stone revetment at Montauk Point on New York's easternmost tip of Long Island will be completed six months ahead of schedule but with many more boulders than were originally budgeted.
The placement of stones for the revetment was "substantially completed at the end of December," James D'Ambrosio, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) public affairs specialist, told the East Hampton Star in a late January email. Originally, the project was slated to finish later this fall.
All the stones were set in place after being hauled piecemeal over the Throgs Neck Bridge in The Bronx from quarries in Connecticut and upstate New York during construction. The remaining work at Montauk Point includes site cleanup, staging area restoration and planting new vegetation on the now-barren site that is all but empty save for a few looming pieces of heavy equipment and a small pile of excess boulders.
The rocks are secured along two long rows that make up the revetment, the East Hampton news outlet noted, and over ones previously installed.
Revetment Also Protects Historic Lighthouse
It has been a long and rocky road to save the Montauk Lighthouse from the ravages of erosion at the point, according to Greg Donahue, the Montauk Historical Society's lighthouse liaison, who oversaw a much smaller-scale boulder-installation project in the 1980s.
"It's been a very long, long 34 years to get to where we are," he said.
Donahue's work followed the groundbreaking work undertaken in 1970 by legendary preservationist Giorgina Reid, who spent much of the ‘70s physically terracing the cliff in front of the old World War II lookout tower that stands in front of the Montauk Lighthouse and installing native plants to hold the earth in place.
The lighthouse, commissioned by President George Washington in 1792 and completed in November 1796, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a National Landmark, due to the efforts of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The latter designation was critical to getting federal dollars devoted to preserving the iconic tower over the last 50 years.
At the time it was built, there was approximately 300 ft. between the Atlantic Ocean and the tower; by the time Reid started her work, the bluff upon which the lighthouse sat became increasingly less stable over the years, and that distance had decreased to approximately 50 ft.
Donohue said he marks Earth Day 1970 as the starting date for efforts to keep the lighthouse from slipping into the sea.
USACE identified the Montauk Point project as in need of a new 800-ft.-plus revetment back in 2005 and said the work was critical to "avoid the eventual total loss of the irreplaceable historic lighthouse complex."
Following Superstorm Sandy in 2012, environmental assessments began at the lighthouse site, a process that took five years to complete. When it came time to find the funding, Donohue explained, leftover money from the $60 billion sent to New York to respond to damage from Superstorm Sandy was set aside for the revetment.
He told the Star that thanks to USACE and its contractor on the job, H&L Contracting in Hauppauge, N.Y., the work undertaken at Montauk Point guarantees that the Montauk Lighthouse "is not going anywhere for hundreds of years."
Donahue noted that H&L's role was the actual stone-setting, while the USACE had the responsibility of engineering and managing a $30.7 million project whose final budget is sure to be higher when the final costs are tallied.
H&L also had to complete other ancillary work during the project, he told the Star.
"They only got paid to set the stones, but there was lots of repaving of the road that they had to do that was not in the original contract," he claimed. "The road would get washed out by waves, prompting H&L to spend about $3.4 million on an excavator and road-building machine."
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation put up $15.4 million for the project. The Montauk Historical Society, which owns the lighthouse, will pay for site maintenance when construction is complete.
Project Required Twice as Many Boulders as Planned
The Montauk Point project called for 65,900 tons of boulders — granite from New York's Adirondack region and pink granite from Connecticut — but the final amount reached 120,000 tons, Donohue noted. About 570 tons are still on site and may wind up being used to shore up an exposed and vulnerable area of the Lake Montauk inlet.
During the revetment construction, H&L also hoisted a World War II-era bunker that the U.S. Coast Guard had reportedly pushed down the cliff when it became a safety hazard. It will now be a feature on the lighthouse grounds.
The Montauk Historical Society owns the Montauk Lighthouse, runs the museum inside the facility — the historical Fresnel lens is a favorite attraction — and manages the grounds. The Coast Guard has authority over the low-maintenance beacon in the lighthouse cupola that still provides navigational guidance to ships at sea.
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