\u201cI\u2019m hearing a lot of shirking of responsibility,\u201d board member Aimee Barnes said on December 7, after the Board of Land and Natural Resources heard from Sunset Beach homeowner Eric Freeman and his attorney, Bernard Bays.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Freeman had just claimed he purchased his eroding shorefront lot in 2020 for $2.5 million sight-unseen and was unaware of just how close the house was to falling into the sea. He then allowed for extensive erosion control measures to be placed on the public beach, despite being warned repeatedly by the Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands that the work being done was illegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bays told the board, \u201cThe Freemans are not bad actors. \u2026 They see a generic shoreline disclosure, they don\u2019t think anything of it. The next thing they\u2019re trying to do is preserve their house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The OCCL\u2019s report to the board told a different story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDespite receiving verbal and written notice of their unauthorized activities from the OCCL starting in January 2022, the Freemans have failed to remove debris and past unauthorized erosion control structures\u2026 and they have willfully continued to allow unauthorized work within the Conservation District in the subject area on at least twenty-two separate days or occasions,\u201d the OCCL report stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the Land Board\u2019s December 7 meeting, the OCCL recommended Freeman and his wife, Moniza, be fined $937,000: $15,000 for the initial Conservation District violation, $330,000 for the 22 days of willful violation, and $592,000 for failure to remove the encroachments from state land after receiving an order to do so on February 7, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt some point someone needs to take responsibility,\u201d Barnes said. She also indicated that Freeman\u2019s excuse that he didn\u2019t know how bad the erosion was \u201cdidn\u2019t sit great” with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The property\u2019s previous owners, Gary and Cynthia Stanley, had also incurred fines for violating Conservation District rules by installing unauthorized sand-filled geotextile tubes (also known as burritos) on the beach fronting the house, which they, and later the Freemans, used as a vacation rental.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The DLNR entered into a settlement with the Stanleys that required removal of all but one burrito and payment of a $3,000 fine. In September 2020, they obtained an emergency Conservation District Use Permit for the remaining burrito and a tarp and sold the property three months later.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That permit required the landowner to secure a right-of-entry permit from the DLNR\u2019s Land Division for the use of public land, to not add any new erosion control measures, and to remove the erosion control structures by the permit expiration date of September 3, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By January 2022, however, investigators observed white polypropylene bags around the burrito, OCCL administrator Michael Cain told the board. He added that the OCCL would never authorize the installation of such bags because \u201cthey break apart and end up in the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even so, more bags were seen later, and eventually a \u201cwhole pyramid of tubes\u201d was installed, Cain said. Some were apparently deflated and in the water, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He recommended that the fines be paid within 90 days of the board\u2019s action and that all unauthorized material be removed by July 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The OCCL also asked the board to authorize the Attorney General\u2019s office to file a notice of pendency of action. Based on Act 236 of the 2023 Legislature, the DLNR has the ability to attach a lien on a property for failure to comply with enforcement actions related to unauthorized structures on public lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI believe this is the first item brought to the board where we\u2019re using this tool,\u201d Cain said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bays stated that the Freemans plan to relocate the house about five feet further inland and raise it on posts. To do that, they are going to need, among other things, approval from the state Department of Health for a new septic system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs soon as we move this house back, we\u2019re going to restore the shoreline as you requested,\u201d he said, adding that their goal was to restore the beach at the end of the summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He warned that it can take a year and a half to get a building permit from the City & County of Honolulu and said he was trying to meet with the mayor and managing director to expedite that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that the Freemans will contribute $150,000 to help fund studies of ways to save the beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m incredibly sorry we\u2019re all sitting here. I\u2019m a huge environmentalist\u2026 I\u2019m usually on the other side of this. I really am,\u201d Eric Freeman added. Given all the work that needed to occur before he could move his house, he asked that the Land Board defer the matter until the end of next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Board member Kaiwi Yoon pressed him on what he knew before he bought the property. Noting the $2.5 million purchase price, Yoon told Freeman that he must be a smart businessman, yet he bought the lot without doing due diligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHonestly, erosion never crossed my mind,\u201d Freeman replied. \u201cI know this house now is toast. \u2026 It\u2019s such a burden now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Randy Meyers, a retired school teacher who lives nearby, said that the tarps that some of the owners have placed along that stretch of beach have already endangered lives. \u201cThere was a surfer that was almost killed by one of these tarps,\u201d he said. \u201c[It] wrapped around him and took him to the shorebreak. A lifeguard cut him out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Land Board chair Dawn Chang asked Freeman whether he was acknowledging that he put anything on the beach, he denied it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou hired a contractor,\u201d Chang replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, the board approved the OCCL\u2019s recommendations, with amendments that allowed the cost of any remediation work done in the next four months (not including moving the house) to be credited against the fine and required the landowners to notify the community of the work being done and to restore the public right-of-way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bays then requested a contested case hearing, which the board quickly granted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Freemans will need to return to the Land Board with a request for a right-of-entry permit for the continued use of state land. The OCCL had asked the board to approve a right-of-entry permit over the state land, but the contested case request puts that on hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014Teresa Dawson<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “I’m hearing a lot of shirking of responsibility,” board member Aimee Barnes said on December 7, after the Board of Land and Natural Resources heard from Sunset Beach homeowner Eric Freeman and his attorney, Bernard Bays. Freeman had just claimed … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,520,17],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-15593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-board-talk","category-january-2024","category-marine","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15593","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=15593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}