No lighthouses will go dark: DFO
Officials with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans say no active lighthouses in Canada will go dark, although nearly 500 of them have been declared surplus property.
A notice with a list of surplus lighthouses — 488 active and 488 inactive — was posted on the department's website on May 27.
It's now up to individuals, municipalities and community-based non-profit groups to try to take over the surplus lighthouses through a petition to Parks Canada.
The new owner would be responsible for ongoing maintenance costs for the structure.
On Wednesday, department officials scrambled to deal with concerns that navigational aids across the country would be lost if the lighthouses aren't claimed by new owners.
"This process is clearly not about turning off any lights," said Daniel Breton, director of navigation services with the Canadian Coast Guard.
"You have to make a distinction between the actual light of the aids navigation itself and the structure.… The practice we're just doing now is to continue this past practice that has worked well, essentially, of separating the light and the structure and allowing the structures to be owned by other interests while the light continues to be used for aids navigation purposes."
DFO officials have said the lighthouses deemed surplus are those that could be replaced with simpler structures that would be cheaper to maintain.
Any lighthouses that are unclaimed will remain DFO assets, but the department may not pay to maintain them.
Breton said Wednesday that divesting the lighthouses is not a cost-cutting move.
He was unable to provide any figures to show how much it costs the federal government to keep the lighthouses from falling down.
Communities react
Meanwhile, Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter said the province is negotiating with Ottawa to take over the lighthouse at Peggys Cove.
That lighthouse — one of the largest tourist attractions in the province — is one of 138 active lighthouses in Nova Scotia that made the surplus list.
Dexter said Wednesday the structure is too important to let go.
"Whether it's done through a trust or a society or whether there's some kind of a maintenance fund established, something that is going to secure that lighthouse and the maintenance of it in perpetuity is what we want to see," he said.
"We don't want it endangered but the form of how that will take place is where the discussion is."
Dexter would not make a commitment for the other surplus lighthouses and said each situation would have to be considered individually.
In New Brunswick, where 32 active lighthouses have been declared surplus, people in the community of Cape Tormentine said they would not want to see their lighthouse structure disappear.
"In the daytime hours when the light is not actually functioning, the structure — being large and white, sitting up high on the end of the wharf — can be seen from a great distance away on the water," said Barry Dean, secretary-treasurer of the Cape Tormentine Harbour Authority.
"In our opinion, it can't be decommissioned," he said.
Contaminated sites
Another issue is that many lighthouse sites are contaminated with lead from paint, mercury that was used to help rotate lights, or diesel fuel that ran generators.
Krishna Sahay, DFO's director general of real property, safety and security, said in most cases, Ottawa would pay to clean any contaminated site.
"Generally speaking, we would not be turning over a contaminated lighthouse," he said. "We would be attempting to remediate it beforehand."
Carol Livingstone, president of the P.E.I. Lighthouse Society, said contamination at most sites is little more than lead from old paint.
"If you went to your church, it was painted with the same paint that the lighthouses were. The courthouses, inns, all of those old buildings," she said.
"It really irks me — to be quite frank — that such a fuss is being made."
Livingstone said she hopes costly remediation does not prevent local groups from trying to preserve the 40 surplus lighthouses in P.E.I.