The Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association is collaborating with local government agencies and stakeholders to develop an interim beach restoration and mitigation plan for the state to save Waikiki’s beaches.
But Dolan Eversole, the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s coastal processes specialist at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, said completing the three-phase strategy will take up to 2028 optimistically.
Eversole said political will is necessary to fund the plan, which currently ranges from $30 million to $60 million depending on the scale and materials.
“Is it worth it? Strongly, yes,” he said. “If Waikiki Beach generates $2 billion a year in economic value, we’re still getting a great return on investment.”
Doing nothing, Eversole warned, could be disastrous.
“If we take a hands-off approach, the beaches will disappear,” he said. “We’d lose them as a recreational resource.”
Eversole said, worse yet, collapsing beaches could compromise seawalls, roads and underground utilities.
“You’ll start to see failures: leaks, structural issues, environmental and health concerns,” he said.
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Beyond infrastructure, Waikiki carries deep cultural and economic meaning.
“There’s a huge social, cultural, recreational and economic impact if we lose these beaches,” said Eversole. “Everyone we’ve talked to — stakeholders, local leaders — wants to see beaches remain.”
Eversole said immediate actions in the three-phase strategy would include closing hazardous walkways like the Halekulani Boardwalk, where storm damage and beach loss have exposed collapsed concrete slabs and rebar. Temporary closures of such areas are under consideration.
Over the midterm, he said that the plan calls for adding limited amounts of sand and installing small stabilizing structures to improve access and slow erosion.
Eversole said the long-term restoration effort involves constructing T-head groins — large rock structures designed to retain sand and stabilize the shoreline, with the goal of restoring parts of Waikiki to the condition that it was in some 40 to 50 years ago.
“It’s not natural,” he said.“We’re restoring it to a former state, not a natural one.”
The Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association’s proposal, introduced in April 2024, focuses on restoring the eroded shoreline at Kawehewehe Beach through a small-scale beach nourishment effort that would place up to 5,000 cubic yards of sand across three priority areas: Kawehewehe, Gray’s and Sheraton beaches. This project also serves as a pilot demonstration for a new small-scale dredging system that could be used in future beach and harbor maintenance projects statewide.
The initiative aligns with the broader vision outlined in the Waikiki Beach Improvements environmental impact statement, with WBSIDA as a public-private partner. It could serve as a litmus test for how other parts of Hawaii and coastal cities worldwide respond to rising seas and vanishing shorelines.
Rick Egged, president of the WBSIDA and the Waikiki Improvement Association, said the scope of work, design and cost estimates are still being developed, and both the construction start date and completion timeline are pending.
Egged said, “We are hoping to see the Legislature approve $5 million during this session to complete the final plans and permits. Once we have the final plans and estimates, we hope the state will fund the rest.”
Potential sand sources include onshore deposits and nearshore areas such as the Hilton pier channel.
In some areas like the Halekulani Hotel, where the beach was mostly gone even before the latest damage, full reconstruction is planned — with new sand and permanent groins creating a beach where none existed before.
“These problems aren’t insurmountable,” Eversole said. “We have ways to deal with them. But we have to act.”
