A bill that would have stepped up controls over mounds of sandbags and heavy tarps that private property owners have used to protect their homes, condos and hotels at the expense of the public beach died a quiet death this legislative session after the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Ways and Means Committee declined to schedule it for a joint hearing.
The state has a “no tolerance” policy for shoreline-hardening structures, including seawalls, which over the years have contributed to significant beach loss throughout the islands. But dozens of private property owners have been able to skirt this restriction by obtaining emergency approvals from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to install sloping walls of sandbags and heavy fabric along the shorelines to prevent the ocean from clawing away at their properties. Others have installed them without state permission.
The emergency protections are supposed to serve as a stopgap measure to protect the public from homes, hotels and other structures that are poised to collapse onto the shorelines. But in the past, DLNR’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands granted property owners repeated extensions, allowing the protections to last years and sometimes decades. DLNR has tried to crack down on the expired shielding structures over the past year, but property owners have refused to remove them and in most cases the state hasn’t taken enforcement action, which can include large fines.
The conflict has played out most conspicuously along the west side of Maui and Oahu’s North Shore where rows of so-called burritos, long sandbags and heavy tarps, mar prized beaches, blocking the public’s ability to walk along the shoreline. While the sandbags are intended to stave off a public safety hazard, they’ve created their own dangers as they get whipped around by the waves.
Senate Bill 2519 would have limited the emergency protections to one year and transferred oversight over any extensions to the seven- member state Board of Land and Natural Resources, which oversees the department. The Land Board would have been allowed to extend the protections for up to 2-1/2 years, but only if the property owner showed that a “bona fide planning effort” was underway to either relocate their home, or other property, abandon it or restore the sandy beach.
The measure also specifies that the Land Board must strictly enforce deadlines for removing the temporary structures.
The Land Board has the power to fine property owners $15,000 for not removing expired burritos and other protections, and $15,000 for every day that the structures remain.
Sen. Chris Lee (D, Hawaii Kai-Waimanalo-Kailua), who introduced the bill, said the conflicts over Hawaii’s public shorelines need to be resolved sooner rather than later given the realities of climate change and rising sea levels, which will accelerate beach erosion.
“The longer we wait, it is only going to get more difficult and more expensive,” said Lee.
The bill was supported by DLNR. Suzanne Case, who chairs the Land Board, said in written testimony supporting the measure that DLNR “shares the Legislature’s concern that many of these temporary structures have become de-facto permanent shoreline hardening structures that have led to an obvious degradation of the public beach resources.”
Case said DLNR’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands has been trying to rein in the problem, but enforcement is difficult. She said property owners frequently ask for contested cases or fight the state in court, constraining the department’s ability to act quickly.
“The tools and the resources that the department has have proven inefficient in addressing the current environmental crisis triggered by climate change, rising seas, and coastal erosion,” Case said in her testimony. “We acknowledge that the issuance of emergency permits for shoreline structures has not been an effective tool in responding to sea level rise and associated shoreline erosion, nor has it expedited the implementation of sustainable sea level rise adaptation that reduces the potential loss of life and property while protecting Hawaii’s natural resources.”
Case said SB 2519 would have given the department a “stronger framework for managing and regulating work in the shoreline, and in protecting the state’s public trust resources.”
While DLNR has struggled to get property owners to remove the expired structures, it has taken a hard line over the past year, largely refusing to approve any more emergency structures, citing homeowners’ refusal to comply with the conditions of the permits.
Lauren Blickley, Hawaii regional manager for the Surfrider Foundation, said in an interview earlier this month, after a house on Oahu’s North Shore collapsed onto the beach along Rocky Point, that she was frustrated the measure died.
“If this wasn’t the year to pass it, and if this situation wasn’t the situation to light the fire under a bill like that, then I really don’t know what it is going to take for us on a political level in this state to really be looking at long-term solutions to manage coastal erosion,” she said. “This needs to be a priority, and it feels like because we have been able to Band-Aid the issue for so long and skirt the issue for so long, that as a whole the state is kind of living in this naive bubble of ‘We are going to be OK.’”
Sen. Karl Rhoads (D, Downtown-Nuuanu-Liliha), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that he let the bill die this year because other bills took priority and DLNR already has a process in place to take enforcement action against property owners.
Rhoads said he and Senate Ways and Means Chair Donovan Dela Cruz “couldn’t hear every single bill that came to us jointly, so because there was already a process in place, I felt like this was one that could wait.”
At the same time, Rhoads acknowledged that the situation along Hawaii’s coastlines is only going to get worse. “The house falling into the water on the North Shore is just the beginning, and we do need to address the issue,” he said.
