{"id":10722,"date":"2018-11-01T02:27:34","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T02:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.environment-hawaii.org\/?p=10722"},"modified":"2020-09-12T19:13:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T19:13:26","slug":"board-talk-windward-oahu-seawalls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=10722","title":{"rendered":"Board Talk: Windward O\u02bbahu Seawalls"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Board Rejects Plan To Dump Rocks Along Lanikai Seawall<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

On October 26, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources denied the owners of a $9 million beachfront lot in Lanikai a Conservation District Use Permit to dump a sloped pile of small rocks over a 2,000-square-foot section of the beach fronting their deteriorating seawall to keep it from failing.<\/p>\n

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The Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands (OCCL) had recommended rejecting the permit, mainly because it failed to meet its criteria for Conservation District Use Permits and because the state has a policy that generally prohibits private protection structures seaward of the shoreline.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel that if the homeowners want to improve their armoring, then they should do it on their property in this case,\u201d OCCL administrator Sam Lemmo told the board. The property, owned by Elizabeth Rice Grossman, spans more than 22,000 square feet. To allow the installation of a rock apron on the public beach would set a bad precedent for his office, he added.<\/p>\n

Sea Engineering\u2019s Chris Conger, however, tried to explain how the rock apron might actually bring more sand into the area. He noted that in 1968, a rock scour apron was legally installed across the subject and neighboring properties, but the rocks fronting Grossman\u2019s property were removed in 2004 to avoid having to obtain an easement for them from the DLNR.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Conger said that neighbors who retained the 1968 scour apron have more sand fronting their seawalls, and a 1995 paper by University of Hawai\u2018i scientists found that in Lanikai, in general, dissipative structures had more sand fronting them than vertical seawalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis might be the right place to do a sand apron,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Board member Keone Downing questioned the wisdom of focusing on the seaward side of the seawall when Grossman\u2019s primary objective was to protect the upland development. Given that the mauka side of the seawall reportedly suffered from sinkholes, Downing asked what Grossman was doing inside her property to protect her wall. \u201cPutting riprap is not stopping water going under,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Conger said the riprap\u2019s main purpose was to relieve wave pressure on the wall. \u201cIf you can stop the beating, you can prevent some undermining,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Conger\u2019s Sea Engineering colleague added that a geotextile material beneath the riprap would slow water from penetrating beneath the wall.<\/p>\n

Despite the consultants\u2019 explanations, some board members remained unconvinced the project was worthwhile. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you improve your wall? That\u2019s the simplest thing. It\u2019s on your land,\u201d Kaua\u2018i board member Tommy Oi asked. \u201cWhat\u2019s going to stop the owners all the way down from asking for the same thing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a precedent question. Yes sir,\u201d Conger replied.<\/p>\n

Board member Chris Yuen, a former head of the Hawai`i County Planning Department, was open to the proposal. \u201cMy internal policy is, I want to be tough on people who don\u2019t have seawalls and want to build them, but allow people who have seawalls to repair them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Yuen noted that an OCCL report shows that the section of beach fronting the property is eroding and asked Conger whether any effort to retain sand in the area was hopeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point, there\u2019s not enough sand for it to ever create a new beach. … What we\u2019re talking about is an incremental improvement,\u201d Conger replied.<\/p>\n

While the Lanikai Association, a community group, supported the project, Teresa Parsons of the Kailua Neighborhood Board reported that the board did not offer its support when first presented with the proposal years ago.<\/p>\n

When it came time for the Land Board to vote, Lemmo discouraged the board from basing its decision on the hope that the rock curtain was going to allow for sand accretion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reasons to not [approve] are more important for me. Everybody in Lanikai is watching this. Trust me. We\u2019re going to be getting into a sloping rubble love-fest. The reality is, when you have a chronically eroding shoreline like Lanikai, it\u2019s unlikely that anything is going to make a difference. … Plus we have a situation with sea level rise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if you want to go down this road, authorizing rock blankets. It\u2019s not the end of the world if you do it, but I just think it\u2019s a weak argument,\u201d Lemmo said.<\/p>\n

Yuen asked Lemmo about approaching the project as an experiment: Let Grossman dump the rocks. If sand doesn\u2019t accrete, she removes it; if it does, the rocks stay.<\/p>\n

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Lemmo said he didn\u2019t think such an arrangement was fair to his staff. \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t work out, do you realize how much energy it will take to get them to take it out? It\u2019s extremely, extremely onerous on everybody,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Whether or not the rock curtain would work was not the main issue of concern to Lemmo, anyway. \u201cAre we going to keep armoring the shoreline, when they have a perfectly reasonable option?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

Downing cited the many ways the experiment idea was problematic: \u201cWhat\u2019s the line to take out or leave in? Who\u2019s going to decide? How many years [before a decision is made]? If we do get to that point, who makes the call?. … You point to him; the other guy says no. We go into court about it. … For some reason, the history of us putting stuff in the water, it never comes out even when we\u2019re supposed to take it out,\u201d he said, adding that rocks are not easy to move.<\/p>\n

In the end, the board voted 6-1 to support Lemmo\u2019s recommendation.<\/p>\n

Downing said there was no guarantee the riprap would hold sand. Oi and board member Stanley Roehrig expressed their concern about creating a bad precedent after the department has fought for so many years against shoreline hardening.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOn North Shore, at Sunset Beach we\u2019ve been \u2018geeving it to them\u2019. Sometimes they take desperate measures. Boy, do they get fined,\u201d Roehrig said, referring to past enforcement cases against landowners who installed emergency measures without authorization from OCCL.<\/p>\n

Yuen was the only no vote. \u201cIt may be hopeless in the end. The beach in this area is most likely doomed to sea level rise [but] I think the applicant made a good presentation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

Board Issues Fine <\/strong><\/h3>\n

For Kane\u2018ohe Seawall<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>
P52 is a state-owned Conservation District parcel that Charles T.Y. Wong constructed a seawall in front of.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On September 28, the Land Board fined a Kane\u2018ohe Bay homeowner $10,750 for building a seawall on state Conservation District land after the Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands (OCCL) told him not to.<\/p>\n

In 2011, the office received a complaint about unauthorized mangrove removal fronting a small parcel owned by the state, as well as a larger lot owned by Charles Tsu Yew Wong. After investigating, the OCCL sent him a letter ordering him to clean up any mud or silt on the land and do no additional work, including seawall repair or construction. Even so, when Wong\u2019s contractor finished cleaning the land, Wong directed him to restore the seaward area to what it was like before the mangrove work was done. A rocky embankment, which Wong argued was installed several decades ago, originally fronted the land. Rather than restore it, he had a proper seawall built.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m sorry. It\u2019s a ripple effect of a chain of events that I didn\u2019t foresee,\u201d Wong told the board, noting that he had, in good faith, called a number of state offices for advice on the mangrove removal before starting his work.<\/p>\n

OCCL administrator Sam Lemmo, however, claimed that Wong erected the seawall to aid his efforts create two developable lots, an accusation Wong vehemently denied. A few years after the work was done, Wong asked the DLNR about buying the 400-square-foot state parcel. He told the board that he later found out the purchase wouldn\u2019t benefit him because the parcel is in the Conservation District and would not add to his total developable area.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lemmo recommended imposing a maximum fine of $15,000 for the unauthorized seawall, plus an administrative penalty of $750. Land Board member Chris Yuen, however, was more sympathetic and recommended Wong pay $10,000 for the violation plus the administrative penalty and also remove the 28-foot seawall along the state\u2019s property. The board unanimously approved the motion. (Our September 2018 New & Noteworthy item details Wong\u2019s efforts to develop his lot.)<\/p>\n

\u2014Teresa Dawson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Board Rejects Plan To Dump Rocks Along Lanikai Seawall On October 26, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources denied the owners of a $9 million beachfront lot in Lanikai a Conservation District Use Permit to dump a sloped … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-10722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-november-2018","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}