In its campaign over the summer to raise matching funds for a state grant to build a dock at its Pequot Avenue lighthouse, the New London Maritime Society made some odd claims.  

You might say the claims were flat out wrong. At the very least, I would say, they were misleading.

In a plea for donations on the fundraising website indiegogo, for instance, the society said that land access to its lighthouse had been blocked by litigation with neighbors.

The society, which raised $6,815 of a $31,500 goal on the indiegogo site, meant to match $125,000 of a state grant, said it needed the dock so that people could visit the lighthouse.

On the top of the plea for donations on the website is an aerial photograph of the lighthouse that also shows two neighboring houses.

"We don't own the houses, just the lighthouse — and we are not allowed in!" the text underneath says.

The same picture and text appeared on fundraising posters put up around town.

"The new neighbors on both sides of the lighthouse are preventing our access and costing us a great deal of money in legal fees," the society wrote. "You deserve access to the lighthouses. Lighthouses are our history."

Of course, the neighbors of the Pequot Avenue lighthouse never prevented the society from providing access.

The lighthouse came from the federal government with a wide right of way all the way from Pequot Avenue to the water and the lighthouse.

The society did indeed get into lawsuits with the neighbors. One neighbor sued after the society began a boundary line dispute. The society initiated a lawsuit against another neighbor, after the neighbor tried to stop it from trespassing with visitors.

Neither of those disputes, however, blocked the society from using its own land to create a walkway to the lighthouse.

Indeed, in its 2004 application to the federal government to take title to the lighthouse, the society said it would build a new walkway on the lighthouse property and avoid confrontation with the neighbors.

It is strange that the society not only got into unfortunate legal battles with both of its neighbors — saying unflattering things about them in public forums — but also used the lawsuits to raise money.

"The dock will also bypass the problems we are currently having with both our neighbors, who are preventing our access by land to the lighthouse," the society wrote. "We really need that dock!"

Wanting and needing are different things, as we all know.

If I were among those who donated money for the dock, it seems I would have cause to complain that the society misled me.

The society has possibly also played loose with the facts in describing the proposed dock as "historic," one neighbor told me.

The only dock the ever located in the vicinity of the lighthouse was far away from the property now owned by the society, the neighbor said.

The federal government at one time owned much more shoreline and the lighthouse dock was originally in front of what is now another neighbor's house, where there are few rocks.

When I asked society Director Susan Tamulevich about the description of the proposed dock as historic, she said they have an old picture of it. When I asked to see it, she said she didn't have time to show it to me.

In any event, the dock, even if one ever existed where the society wants to build one now, will still need new permits from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, because there has been none there for so long, a DEEP spokesman told me.

The society has not yet applied for permits but has hired a Mystic dock builder who has made inquiries about permits required, the spokesman said.

Once an application has been made, DEEP staff can determine whether to make a recommendation to grant it. That recommendation can be sent to a hearing officer and a public hearing held if requested by a petition with more than 25 signatures.

I suspect the proposed dock, which would alter the classic appearance of the lighthouse perched starkly on the rocky shoreline, might generate a lively public hearing.

The DEEP suggested to the society's dock consultant, the spokesman said, that the organization resolve "upland issues" like boundary and zoning disputes, before proceeding with the dock permit application.

The society is appealing to Superior Court a city cease-and-desist zoning order that stops lighthouse tours in the residential neighborhood.

Had the litigious society sought zoning permission and cooperated with neighbors in the first place, as it promised the federal government it would when seeking the lighthouse property, it might be simpler now to get permission to build the dock the state Department of Economic Development, envisioning improved tourism, has agreed to help finance.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct