Bodie Lighthouse snubbed again in federal budget

Year after year, the Bodie Island Lighthouse has been in line to get funding for a complete restoration. Each time, it has been shoved aside.

Shut out once again in the federal budget that was signed by President Bush on Dec. 26, the 136-year-old tower is showing its age, with corroding metalwork, broken windows and inadequate electrical wiring.

"I don't know what's going to happen," said Bett Padgett, president of the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society, a nonprofit group that supports preservation of lighthouses. "Since it keeps continuously getting yanked out of the budget, I'm afraid that the National Park Service is going to have less and less money."

The society hopes to meet in the coming weeks with the Park Service, the town of Nags Head and the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau to discuss other options for getting the work done, including a proposal to have the state lease the lighthouse. The hope is that once it is restored, it could support itself with climbing fees.

"This is kind of a far-fetched idea," Padgett said. "I don't know if it will happen, but it's a possibility."

Padgett said that except for stabilization work, repair of the beacon - tucked on marshlands north of Oregon Inlet - has been unfunded for at least four years. But budget watchers had assured the society that the Bodie Island project was at the top of the list on this year's proposal, she said, and it had made it into both the president's budget and the U.S. House of Representatives budget. But Senate negotiators removed the $2.8 million request in the final hours.

Even Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials did not expect that outcome. Days before the budget was approved, superintendent Mike Murray told reporters at a news meeting that the funding request was on course.

Funds for a new roof, gutters and painting at Ocracoke Lighthouse keepers' quarters and for a new roof for the main house at Little Kinnakeet Life Saving Station were approved, said Doug Stover, National Park Service Outer Banks Group historian.

It's still not known, he said, whether the money requested for restoration of the visitors center, The Lost Colony Building and the headquarters at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site survived the budget knife.

In 2004, four chunks of metal - one weighing 450 pounds - fell from the gallery at the top of the lighthouse. The public was not allowed into the base of the tower until the lighthouse was stabilized two years later. No one has been allowed to climb up the 156-foot tower for years. The proposed restoration would restore the spiral staircase and hopefully allow the public to climb its 205 steps.

The Park Service has not given up on funding the project.

"We know it's going to go in for next year," Stover said. Meanwhile, he said, the Park Service is going to pursue other avenues, even if it gets just a portion of the work done.

A separate request for $250,000 has been submitted for next year's budget to restore the lens, he said, one of the few first-order Fresnel lenses that remain with their original lighthouses.

Outshined for years by the taller, more famous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton, the 1872 black-and-white banded lighthouse was transferred in 2000 by the Coast Guard to the Park Service. In 2005, the Coast Guard gave ownership of the Fresnel lens to the Park Service, with the understanding that agency would continue to maintain it as a navigational aid.

Padgett said that in light of the Bush administration's effort to upgrade the Park Service in preparation for its 100th anniversary, it doesn't make sense to continue to neglect historic gems like Bodie Island Lighthouse.

"If they're going to have to wait for the request to come through for the Centennial budget in 2016, the lighthouse may not be standing," she said. "Nobody seems to be willing to stand up for this little lighthouse, except for the folks on the coast. This lighthouse is something that belongs to everybody."

Catherine Kozak, (252) 441-1711, cate.kozak@pilotonline.com