For the last two years, the expansion of the Ma`alaea small boat harbor was held up because of the refusal of the Office of State Planning (now simply the Office of Planning) to declare the project consistent with the state Coastal Zone Management program. In addition, surfers concerned over impacts to surf breaks brought litigation seeking to block the project as proposed.
Now the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, working with the Army Corps of Engineers and the National Marine Fisheries Service, has prepared a plan that attempts to address concerns of surfers as well as the CZM program.
Whether it will satisfy the surfers enough to cause them to drop their lawsuit is undetermined at this point. But the CZM program, which now has been placed under the umbrella of the state Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism, has signed on to the plan, reversing its previous objections.
In a letter dated September 12, 1996, Rick Egged, a deputy director of DBEDT and director of the Office of Planning, informed the Corps of Engineers that the project was now consistent with the state’s CZM program. “On the basis of the information included in the draft mitigation plan and its implementation, the project should satisfy our CZM concerns,” Egged wrote.
Surfer Concerns
The mitigation plan calls for scaling back by about 100 feet the mole at the entrance channel and reconfiguring its attachment to the south breakwater. “Prior to this design modification,” the plan states, “the revetted mole extended seaward approximately 150 feet into Buzz’ 2 [a popular surf break]. The toe of the revetted mole is maintained within 100 feet of the existing structure… The revetted mole will be tapered…, adding additional maneuvering area for surfers.”
To reduce impacts to Buzz’ 1 “from slight to none,” the breakwater extension will be built with a single layer of concrete armor units rather than being built of multiple layers of concrete armor units.
In addition, the Division of Boating has agreed to provide easier access to the water via the east mole, “as well as showers at the east and south moles.”
The existing sand beach at the eastern end of the harbor will be eliminated with construction of the proposed harbor improvements. However, the mitigation plan states, “this sand beach was removed from Hawai`i’s public beach inventory in the 1960s,” when Ma`alaea harbor was acquired. In any case, the plan states, loss of this 250-foot-long beach would amount to a reduction of just 0.6 percent of the “the safe, suitable swimming beaches on Maui, although its location inside a harbor is neither a ‘safe’ nor ‘suitable’ place for swimming.”
Replacing the beach would be a 750-foot revetted mole extending inside the existing east breakwater. This, the plan states, “is part of the state’s plan for increasing berthing within the harbor. The revetted mole supports the project purpose and would also facilitate closer access to harbor waters for fishermen and to surf sites for surfers.”
Coral Loss
The mitigation plan acknowledges that construction of the project would destroy coral reef habitat. As originally proposed, 3.7 acres of live coral coverage would be eliminated. Under the mitigation plan, “about 4.3 acres of marine habitat would be affected by the combined construction of the entrance channel and breakwater, with about 2.8 acres of live coral affected.”
The mitigation plan attempts to minimize these losses by comparing them to the total acreage of coral reef habitat around the island of Maui. With some 50,903 acres of coral reef habitat around Maui, loss of 3.7 acres of substrate comes to just 0.0083 percent of Maui’s coral reef habitat, the plan notes.
Still, to mitigate this loss, the plan calls for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to perform a baseline assessment “to locate major coral colonies and potential sites for coral relocation, transplantation, and long-term monitoring to measure success rates of transplantation…. In order to mitigate the impacts of construction of the project, additions to the existing artificial reef at Keawekapu will be used to offset adverse impacts to fish.”
Turtles and Whales
The mitigation plan states that the proposed project is expected to have no impact on the green sea turtle or the humpback whale populations in waters around Maui. (For unexplained reasons, the plan is silent with respect to the endangered hawksbill turtle, which is known to nest at Kealia National Wildlife Refuge, next door to Ma`alaea.) Still, it says, “potential impacts to individual whales and turtles include injury or death caused by construction activities or increased boating activity.”
To minimize impacts to these species, the plan calls for the Division of Boating to “review the state boating plan for current and future harbor and boat ramp needs, as well as the locations and capacities of designated mooring areas … and revise these plans to avoid adverse impacts to listed species.”
If blasting is required, the plan states, the contractor “will be required to prepare a blasting plan… Blasting will be avoided to the maximum practicable extent between December and May.” Blasting would be confined to “small charges,” and before charges are set, “the contractor will be required to conduct a survey for turtles and marine mammals in the vicinity.”
‘Alternative 6’
At the time the final supplemental environmental impact statement was prepared, it included an option — Alternative 6 — designed to mitigate the impacts of an expanded harbor on surf sites. Critics at the time argued that Alternative 6 had been summarily rejected. The draft mitigation plan includes an “information paper,” prepared by the Army Corps of Engineers, which claims that Alternative 6 would present navigational hazards.
The flushing period of the harbor, the paper states, would be 6.3 days under Alternative 6, as opposed to 2.9 days for existing conditions and 3.3 days for the recommended plan. “Implementation of Alternative 6,” the Corps of Engineers says, “would result in a project exceeding the EPA circulation criteria,” calling for a flushing period of no more than five days.
In addition, the paper states, “the berthing capacity of this alternative would be approximately 93 to 128 berths as compared to 220 berths under the recommended alternative. This small increase in harbor capacity from the existing 87 berths would produce a low amount of general navigational benefits. Clearly, with a reduction of the number of berths as compared to the recommended alternative, Alternative 6 would not to [sic] economically feasible. There would be no federal interest in a project not achieving appropriate net benefits.”
Volume 7, Number 5 November 1996
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