Lighthouse Money Outlives Bush Veto
 Doug Kuntz |
(11/08/2007) For the first time in his presidency, the House of Representatives voted on Tuesday, by 361 to 54, to override a veto by President Bush. He had tried to stop a bill allotting $23 billion to fund the Water Resource Development Act, a portion of which was earmarked for the Montauk Point Lighthouse revetment and other Long Island projects.
Representative Tim Bishop, who helped secure the funding along with Senators Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, said before the vote on Tuesday that he was sure the veto would fail since the funding bill had cleared both the House and the Senate with more than the two-thirds majority required for an override. The Senate was expected to vote yesterday.
Mr. Bishop called the president’s veto “an ongoing effort” to cast himself as fiscally responsible. “For the president to lecture anyone on fiscal responsibility is hypocritical,” said Mr. Bishop, who is a Democrat. “This is the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history.”
Of the total, $7.3 million was to go toward the Lighthouse project, which includes shoring up the base of the landmark to prevent it from toppling into the sea.
The project, which has been studied extensively by the Army Corps of Engineers, involves building a 12.6-ton quarry-stone armor that would be 840 feet long and 40 feet high at its tallest point. It is expected to cost $14 million, with the cost shared by the federal government, the State Department of Environmental Conservation, and other agencies.
Not everyone was unhappy when the president vetoed the bill, specifically the eastern chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a group that believes that a stone revetment at the Lighthouse would diminish the waves at nearby surf spots such as Alamo and Turtle Cove.
Surfrider has proposed moving the Lighthouse from the cliff farther back toward the parking area. Army Corps officials and others, however, have said that moving the Lighthouse, which is Montauk’s most popular tourist attraction, could harm the structure and cost a fortune.
In a press release on Tuesday, Tom Naro, the chairman of the local Surfrider chapter, noted that the project still needs to overcome legal challenges and win funding from New York State.
“We are convinced that this project does not meet New York State coastal policies, specifically Policy 14 that prevents construction or reconstruction of erosion protection structures that cause a measurable increase in erosion,” he wrote.
Surfrider members have said the Army Corps has a backlog of 500 authorized projects, which would cost from $12 billion to $60 billion all together, that have not yet received appropriation. “We trust the government will ultimately decide not to literally throw money in the ocean,” the release said.
Gregory Donohue, the erosion control manager at the Lighthouse, said on Tuesday that there is no consensus among surfers that the landmark should be moved. “There is only a small handful of surfers that are pushing for this,” he said. “The notion of moving the Lighthouse is ridiculous.”