A state program to streamline the approval process for projects that restore Hawaii’s ailing beaches got the go-ahead from the Board of Land and Natural Resources on Friday, but environmental advocates plan to contest the decision.

The small-scale beach nourishment program was pitched by state officials as one option for salvaging the state’s eroding beaches. But opponents of the program argued that it primarily benefits private property owners at a time when they need to be looking at retreating from the shoreline amid rising seas.

“This proposal illogically prioritizes buildings over beaches,” Caren Diamond, executive director of Malama Kua-‘aina, which is dedicated to protecting natural resources on Kauai, told the Land Board during public testimony. “The proposed work will disrupt natural beach processes and seeks to diminish the public beach and our public trust rights by allowing private landowners to alter our public beaches. It is an environmental and cultural calamity to invite landowners to bring bulldozers and mechanical equipment to the beach.”

The beach nourishment program, which consolidates the complicated permitting process for projects, began in 2005 but expired in 2010. The Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, a division of DLNR, is seeking to revamp the program, noting the increased demand for such projects as erosion and beach loss worsen throughout the islands.

The program allows for sand pushing, which coastal geologists have warned could hurt beach processes, as well as building groins to trap sand and dumping more sand on the beaches. DLNR recently completed a large-scale beach nourishment project in Waikiki after dredging large amounts of sand from offshore. The program under review would apply to smaller projects.

Sam Lemmo, who heads the Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, defended the proposal, saying that this was just one tool among others to deal with beach loss.

“This is not an effort to rationalize or justify beach restoration projects of all kinds in any place in the Hawaiian Islands,” he said. “It is really an attempt to not only save the finite sand that we have æ but to provide some flexibility and some incentives for people to pursue smaller-scale beach restoration projects, hopefully as an alternative to building illegal seawalls.”

Lemmo took issue with the objections from beach advocates and environmentalists who argued the program benefited private property owners at the expense of the public.

“Just allowing the shoreline to erode and allowing structures to be lost or damaged is not as easy as it sounds, and we really do need to try to provide at least options for people to pursue in lieu of that from happening if it is possible and appropriate in a certain location,” said Lemmo.

Lemmo said the state could end up stuck with an enormous tab if it has to bail out private property owners by condemning properties that are at risk of being damaged or destroyed by the ocean, though it’s debatable whether the state would have to pay for the properties.

In Hawaii, beaches are a public trust, and the state is constitutionally obligated to preserve and protect them. The state has taken the position that as the shoreline moves inland, the state ownership line moves with it.

Environmental groups, including Earthjustice, also raised concerns that the revised program would allow for the approval of emergency sandbag revetments and so-called burritos, sand-filled tubes tied to thick tarps, that are increasingly littering Hawaii’s beaches. The structures are allowed to be installed only temporarily in cases of emergency. But DLNR has allowed private property owners to maintain them for years and sometimes decades. Coastal geologists say that they can be just as damaging as seawalls, which destroy beaches that are trying to push inland.

Lemmo was adamant that the program in no way allows for such approvals.

The Land Board voted 5-2 to approve the revamped beach nourishment program. Board members Pua Canto and Kaiwi Yoon voted against it. But environmental groups said during the hearing that they would seek a contested case.

“So what is the real purpose of fast-tracking beach nourishment? I believe it is to primarily protect poorly sited development,” said Kai Nishiki, an advocate for protecting Hawaii’s shorelines who was among those who said she would seek a contested case.

She said that the recent collapse of Champlain Towers South, a beachfront condo in Florida, should be a warning for Hawaii.

“What if structures fail in spite of shoreline protections? Will the state be held liable?” said Nishiki. She said the beach nourishment program encourages investment in hazardous areas.