State officials are once again trying to crack down on the dozens of sandbag barriers, known as burritos, that have come to litter Hawaii’s beaches. This time they are pushing legislation that would require beachfront property owners who have installed the structures illegally or under temporary permits to disclose the structures and any fines or enforcement actions they may be facing to prospective buyers when they seek to sell their homes.
State Senate and House committees Thursday advanced versions of the measure, which is part of Gov. Josh Green’s legislative package and strongly backed by the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the state agency responsible for protecting Hawaii’s natural resources, including its public shorelines.
Homeowners are already required to disclose any material facts about their property that could affect its value to prospective buyers. But the legislation would harden requirements for disclosing information about the shoreline structures, and DLNR says it believes the measure will spur property owners to remove illegal barriers that are damaging beaches and blocking public access.
If enacted, residential property owners would be required to disclose all permitted and unpermitted “erosion control structures,” which can include sandbags, seawalls, boulders and other hardening structures meant to safeguard private property from the ocean.
If the structure has a permit from DLNR, property owners must disclose its expiration date. If it’s unpermitted, they must detail any fines or violation notices they have received.
Property owners also would have to disclose annual coastal erosion rates for their lots if available on county websites, which DLNR says will alert prospective buyers to the migrating public shoreline.
The public shoreline extends to the high wash of the waves at the time of year when waves push farthest inland. For much of Hawaii’s coastline, this line is pushing mauka, which presents another threat to private- property values.
State laws largely forbid private-property owners from erecting shoreline- hardening structures, which have caused beach loss throughout the state. As waves push up against the barriers that protect private homes and businesses, they claw away at the sand and prevent beaches from being re-nourished.
But property owners have found various ways to exploit loopholes in state and county laws over the years to harden the shorelines in front of their homes, including installing burritos and mounds of sandbags under temporary emergency permits and then not removing them once they expire.
The burritos, which typically cost tens of thousands of dollars, include long, heavy sandbags, which are often attached to black tarps.
DLNR’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Resources has struggled in recent years to force property owners to remove illegally installed or expired protections. Property owners can request contested cases when facing fines and enforcement, which can take months or years to resolve, tying up the state’s limited resources. Some of the burritos along Oahu’s North Shore have also become buried in the sand, and it’s not clear whether or how they can be safely removed.
In written testimony submitted to the Legislature in favor of House Bill 1091 and Senate Bill 1389, DLNR said the real estate disclosure requirements would “reduce the enforcement burden” on both OCCL and its Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement, the agency’s law enforcement arm.
On Oahu alone, OCCL over the past couple of years has been trying to enforce against owners of 64 properties with illegal or expired structures. The owners of just five of the properties have removed material, according to a tally provided this week by DLNR.
State Rep. David Tarnas (D, Kaupulehu-Waimea- Halaula), who chairs the House Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs, said he believes the legislation would help DLNR rein in the shoreline offenders.
“I think that this bill will make the shoreline property owners and sellers get all their permitting in order because they have to disclose whether (the barrier) is not properly permitted,” he said. “So I think it will definitely have a greater impact in terms of compliance.”
The bill is also being supported by the Hawaii Surfrider Foundation and state and county agencies focused on climate change.
Honolulu’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency testified that the disclosure requirements were especially important in the shoreline area because the line between public and private property is dynamic.
“Prospective buyers should understand that they will not be able to rely on illegal or temporary shoreline armoring to mitigate potential future changes,” said Matthew Gonser, the agency’s executive director and chief resilience officer, in written testimony.
The Hawaii Association of Realtors hasn’t taken a position for or against the bill. But Lyndsey Garcia, its director of advocacy, recommended during a committee hearing Thursday that lawmakers delete language from the measure that specifies that property owners must disclose structures “on state land adjacent” to their parcel. She said that a homeowner might not have knowledge of all permitted or unpermitted structures that fall onto state land.
But OCCL Administrator Michael Cain said deleting that language would undermine the purpose of the bill, as the burritos and sandbag barriers are typically constructed on the public beach makai of the private property line.
“We are not talking about something small and hard to see,” he said. “We are talking about very large structures that occupy the state beach. I think it would neuter the bill if we removed that requirement.”
Cain said new beachfront property owners have told OCCL that they didn’t notice there was a large, sandbag burrito system fronting their property when they purchased it.
“It would help our enforcement if we could say, ‘No, this was disclosed,’” he said. “And we believe it would limit landowners from building (the barriers) without authorization on state property and then selling the property before we can bring an enforcement case to our board.”
Lawmakers rejected the recommendation from the Hawaii Association of Realtors. Both bills are expected to pass full votes in the House and Senate before facing further committee hearings and debate.
