If sand is stuck to your feet or in your hair or in your toy shovel, fine. If a little bit spilled into your beach bag, fine. If you need to take some with you for traditional cultural purposes protected by the state Constitution, that’s fine, too. But if you want to take a bucket of sand from the beach to sprinkle in your yard, or for any other reason, even if it’s only a gallon’s worth, that is no longer okay under Act 120.
Act 120 doesn’t just aim to protect Hawai`i’s beaches by controlling unwanted vegetation. The act also prevents sand, coral, rocks, and “other marine deposits” from being hauled off the beach, a gallon at a time.
Until now, state law allowed people to take these materials from the beach, so long as what was taken didn’t exceed one gallon per person per day.
“If people honestly knew how important sand was within an ocean ecosystem, you would have thousands supporting [HB17],” wrote West O`ahu fisherman Carl Jellings in his testimony on the bill.
Act 120 allows for only the inadvertent taking of those materials.
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