FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP) – A lighthouse off Connecticut’s southwest coast guides boats peacefully through Long Island Sound, but a three-way dispute is threatening to cast storm clouds over its future.
The town of Fairfield, an animal rights group and breast cancer research advocates are seeking ownership of the Penfield Reef Lighthouse, a 133-year-old lighthouse that still beams an automated beacon across Black Rock Harbor.
The lighthouse, a square granite-and-wood building topped by a tower and resting on a rocky, hazardous reef, is being shed by the federal government as part of a program enacted by Congress in 2000 to transfer ownership to other governments and nonprofit groups.
The National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act affects more than 200 government-owned lighthouses from Maine to Florida, the West Coast and in Great Lakes states such as Michigan and Ohio. New owners include municipal and state agencies, local historical societies and cultural conservancies.
The struggle over the Penfield Reef Lighthouse is different as two advocacy groups challenge a municipality for ownership in an attempt to use the local icon as a symbolic touchstone for their causes.
Fairfield, a small wealthy town about 50 miles northeast of New York City, wants to preserve Penfield Reef as a historic site, adding it to other town-owned properties managed by the Fairfield Historical Society.
“It’s nice since we are a shoreline community to have a lighthouse of our own,” said Paige Herman, who serves on a town committee and lives within eyesight of the lighthouse a quarter-mile off the coast. “I’ve been here 60 years so I’m a little biased on the subject.”
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals envisions a headquarters for a campaign to draw attention to what the animal protection group says are the horrors of killing fish for food and sport.
“We feel lighthouses for so long have helped people at sea that now in its retirement we think a great way to honor its legacy would be to help fish live at sea,” said Matt Prescott, spokesman for Norfolk, Va.-based PETA.
Del Function Inc. of Norwich, a breast cancer research group, wants the lighthouse as a memorial to victims of breast cancer and other forms of the disease. Del Function conducts a University of Connecticut Health Center study of breast cancer.
“Whether we end up with the lighthouse or not, I need an extra thing to look after like a hole in the head,” Del Function president Carline Lutynski said. “But it can do different things for us.”
Ownership of the lighthouse, which is inaccessible except by boat, will not be transferred soon. The U.S. General Services Administration is collecting letters of interest from prospective owners and will invite interested municipalities and nonprofit organizations to visit the lighthouse.
If neither a government entity nor nonprofit group proves it can maintain the lighthouse, it will be auctioned off. The Coast Guard will maintain the lights regardless of who takes ownership.
Bill Brookover, a historical architect at the National Park Service, said lighthouses have taken on symbolic value as they have become automated and empty. “Lighthouses are very enduring. They survive,” he said. “They’re structures that people build that survive. It’s a beacon. It brings people in.”
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On the Net: http://www.lighthouse.cc/penfieldreef/
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