Some seawalls are easier to sell than others. Take the case of a revetment that Randall and Shelley Bennett are seeking to rebuild at La‘ie, on the northern end of the windward side of O‘ahu. In April, the public and state agencies were given a chance to comment on a draft environmental assessment for an unpermitted 14-foot-high, 100-foot-long, and 25-foot-wide revetment fronting the Bennetts’ property. The comment period ended with no show-stoppers identified.
The revetment had come to the attention of the City and County of Honolulu’s Depart ment of Planning and Permitting in 2003, and in November of that year, the department issued a notice of violation to the Bennetts. They requested and received several exten sions, while they sought an after-the-fact permit. In April 2005, as part of their effort to resolve the notice of violation, their consultant, Sea Engineering, Inc., published a draft environmental assessment for a rebuilt revetment. Last month, the city director of planning issued a finding of no significant impact, which paves the way for processing the Bennetts’ permit application.
So far, the project has received little opposition. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands did not weigh in with comments on the project. Dolan Eversole, of that office, said no environmental assessment was ever received by his office.
According to Scott Sullivan of Sea Engineering, who oversaw preparation of the environmental assessment, the entire revetment, including a five-foot-long “apron” at its base to act as a scour shield, will be built inside the shoreline, as located in a 2003 survey. If that is the case, no part of the wall will lie within the state Conservation District and the DLNR’s rules on building seawalls won’t come into play.
To obtain the shoreline setback variation required for the permit now being sought, the Bennetts must either obtain a certified shore line survey or have the city director of planning and permitting waive that requirement. The existing revetment defines the limit of the shoreline area, but since it is illegal, no shoreline survey can be certified by the state. To get around that catch-22, the Bennetts are seeking a waiver, says Sullivan.
The Bennetts’ lot is large – 100 feet by 300 feet. Still, says Sullivan, “for this area to be safely buildable,” the revetment is necessary. In the past, Sullivan has helped in the prepara tion of reports documenting seawall-induced erosion of beaches on O‘ahu and Maui. But this revetment, he says, is “an instance where protection can be advocated.”
“This is the last remaining unprotected lot,” he told Environment Hawai‘i. “Most of the walls are non-conforming, built before 1970…. Walls on either side of the property are greatly aggravating the problem” of erosion on the Bennett property.
“What we’re doing now isn’t ruining the beach… Its death warrant was signed years ago,” when the first non-conforming seawall was built.
Although the Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands did not comment on the draft environmental assessment, Eversole says his agency is well aware of the Bennett seawall. Before it was built, he said, a certified shore line survey was done around 2003, and while photographs of the pre-seawall shoreline are not definitive, they suggest that the toe of the illegal seawall does follow pretty much the shoreline survey. The OCCL opened a viola tion case, and “while we haven’t closed it,” says Eversole, “it’s kind of on hold until we can resolve where the shoreline is, for jurisdic tional purposes.”
To facilitate that, the OCCL is working with the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting on a procedure to define the shoreline in a way less formal than certification but more rigorous than the grant of a waiver. If the city simply grants a waiver, he said, “we have no way to know if they [applicants] build the structure where they propose building it – it could easily end up more seaward of where it was proposed to be built, and we would have no way of knowing this.”
With the so-called “jurisdictional delineation,” Eversole continued, “we could draw a line in the sand and tell them, ‘go no further than this.’
“I think it’s a travesty how easy it is to build illegal walls and get after-the-fact permits for them. It makes it too tempting for people to do that rather than go through the proper channels,” he said.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 16, Number 5 November 2005