Little Brewster Island / Boston Light update

[Joseph Berkovitz]

It's been known for a while that the Coast Guard is seeking a new steward for Boston Light on Little Brewster Island. Here's a link to a May 13 Globe article on the subject:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/13/metro/new-chapter-set-begin-boston-light-feds-seek-new-steward-historic-lighthouse/

On the Fire and Ice geology trip last weekend, we intended to visit Little Brewster — to see the rocks of course, not to visit the lighthouse (although that would have been nice). Bob and I had previously met some Coast Guard officers on the island in June, who had told us that all we needed to do was to call the CG the morning we wanted to go out there. So we did that on Sunday morning, and were told it would be no problem. Then I got a call back saying that the CG needed to check with the Park Service first. Then I got a second call back saying that the Park Service needed more lead time to approve a visit, and we couldn't go after all. Rather confusing!

Today I spoke to the actual Keeper of Boston Light, whose name is Sally Snowman. She has a unique job in the Coast Guard, as Boston Light is the last staffed lighthouse in the United States (and also the oldest continuously used lighthouse). She is the 70th person to hold that position and the first woman. You can find out more about her here. 

Not surprisingly, Sally Snowman knows the score on what is going on. The stewardship transfer is happening because the charter of the Harbor Islands Park requires the Coast Guard to take care of the lighthouse as a landmark, not just as a navigational aid. But the reality is that the Coast Guard is not set up to take care of a historic structure that holds tremendous public interest. The immediate issue is that while the transfer is pending (i.e. until someone actually buys the lighthouse) there are a number of repair and restoration projects going on that pose some level of risk to visitors to the island in their unfinished state. The keeper herself is not even on the island at the moment while this work is going on, and there is no one to keep visitors safe. So to avoid taking any chances — I would translate this as, "to avoid screwing up anything by getting sued" —  the whole island has been declared off limits to the public until the transfer takes place. To make things even more complex there are also 10 different stakeholders in Boston Light - CG, the US military, NPS, State Police, Mass. DEP, etc, and they all have their concerns. Sally told me she thought the timeline for the transfer would be 2 to 5 years.

This does not affect any of the other islands in the outer harbor, because those do not have the same combination of agencies that are involved. So we can visit Calf, Green, the other Brewsters, and so forth. Just not Little Brewster.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Joseph Berkovitz