built around the pier, and a new well was dug. This first Edgartown Light was destroyed in the Hurricane of 1938. In 1939, the United States Coast Guard demolished the existing buildings and installed an 1881 vintage cast-iron tower relocated from Ipswich Rear Range Light. When reconstructed at the mouth of Edgartown Harbor, the relocated conical tower was fitted with the fourth-order Fresnel lens, electrified, and automated. Rescued from destruction From 1939 through to the early 1980s, the automated Edgartown Harbor Light was maintained by the United States Coast Guard. Due to U. S. Coast Guard Congressional funding shortages through the 1970s and early 1980s, various lighthouses around the United States were destroyed or designated for destruction. Such designation was due to the high expense of maintaining the structures, and because the lights no longer served as vital aids to navigation. This obsolete status of the lighthouses was facilitated by enhanced satellite GPS and other electrical maritime navigation aids. Documentation of lighthouses destroyed in recent history is available from Lighthouse Digest, which maintains a record of destroyed lighthouses as well as a "Doomsday List" of threatened lights. According to the 2012 "Doomsday List" published by Lighthouse Digest, there are currently 43 lighthouses in the U.S. listed for destruction in the near future. Due to such funding shortages, the Edgartown Harbor Light and two other Martha's Vineyard lighthouses (Gay Head Light and East Chop Light) were designated for destruction by the federal government in the early 1980s. As in other similar lighthouse removal projects, the United States Coast Guard would dismantle or raze the existing lighthouse and often replace the light with a low-maintenance iron spindle structure top-mounted with a strobe light. The three threatened lights on Martha's Vineyard were saved through federal petition and Congressional testimony by Vineyard Environmental Research, Institute's (VERI) founding board member and President, William Waterway Marks, and, Chair, John F. Bitzer, Jr. VERI was a nonprofit organization co-founded in 1984 by William Waterway Marks and Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr., to undertake cutting-edge environmental research of acid rain; sea-level rise; shellfish resources; coastal erosion; Great Pond, wetland, and barrier beach ecosystem dynamics, and aquifer (groundwater) protection. During and after the Congressional hearings, VERI's effort to save the island's three iconic lighthouses received support from Congressman Gerry Studds, and Senator Ted Kennedy. Shortly after the Congressional hearings, the United States Coast Guard issued a 35-year license for the