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\u2018ie, on the northern end of the windward side of O\u2018ahu. In April, the public and state agencies were given a chance to comment on a draft environmental assessment for an unper mitted 14-foot-high, 100-foot-long, and 25-foot-wide revetment fronting the Bennetts\u2019 property. The comment period ended with no show-stoppers identified.<\/p>\n
The revetment had come to the attention of the City and County of Honolulu\u2019s 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 per mit. In April 2005, as part of their effort to resolve the notice of violation, their consult ant, Sea Engineering, Inc., published a draft environmental assessment for a rebuilt revet ment. Last month, the city director of plan ning issued a finding of no significant impact, which paves the way for processing the Bennetts\u2019 permit application.<\/p>\n
So far, the project has received little oppo sition. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
According to Scott Sullivan of Sea Engi neering, who oversaw preparation of the envi ronmental assessment, the entire revetment, including a five-foot-long \u201capron\u201d 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\u2019s rules on building seawalls won\u2019t come into play.<\/p>\n
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 plan ning 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.
\nThe Bennetts\u2019 lot is large \u2013 100 feet by 300 feet. Still, says Sullivan, \u201cfor this area to be safely buildable,\u201d the revetment is necessary. In the past, Sullivan has helped in the prepara tion of reports documenting seawall-induced erosion of beaches on O\u2018ahu and Maui. But this revetment, he says, is \u201can instance where protection can be advocated.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the last remaining unprotected lot,\u201d he told Environment Hawai\u2018i. \u201cMost of the walls are non-conforming, built before 1970\u2026. Walls on either side of the property are greatly aggravating the problem\u201d of ero sion on the Bennett property.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing now isn\u2019t ruining the beach\u2026 Its death warrant was signed years<\/p>\n
ago,\u201d when the first non-conforming seawall was built.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cwhile we haven\u2019t closed it,\u201d says Eversole, \u201cit\u2019s kind of on hold until we can resolve where the shoreline is, for jurisdic tional purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 certifica tion but more rigorous than the grant of a waiver. If the city simply grants a waiver, he said, \u201cwe have no way to know if they [appli\u00adcants] build the structure where they propose building it \u2013 it could easily end up more seaward of where it was proposed to be built, and we would have no way of knowing this.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the so-called \u201cjurisdictional delinea tion,\u201d Eversole continued, \u201cwe could draw a line in the sand and tell them, \u2018go no further than this.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
— Patricia Tummons<\/p>\n
Volume 16, Number 5 November 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-november-2005"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537","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=1537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}