Don’t ease rules on retaining walls

The City Council should swiftly defeat a measure that would make it easier for shoreline homeowners to build retaining walls on their properties.

Bill 17 represents an ill-advised policy switch that could hasten coastal erosion, limit access to beaches that belong in the public domain and cause damage to neighboring properties.

City planners, state land-use officials and environmentalists are correctly uniform in their opposition to this bill, which represents a U-turn from policy dating back to the 1970s that emphasizes shoreline preservation and public access over special accommodations for property owners. Careful management of construction on oceanfront property is even more paramount now, in the era of climate change, making this bill all the more unfathomable.

Moreover, Bill 17 is a glaring example of constituent service gone too far. Council Chairman Ernie Martin introduced it at the behest of landowner and attorney Howard Green, who helped draft the measure, and is at odds with the city over two unpermitted walls he built to control runoff and erosion on his Kaneohe Bay-front property.

The bill, which aims "to ease the regulatory process to encourage full use of shoreline residential lots," would allow homeowners to build retaining walls within setback areas of their property after obtaining only a minor shoreline structure permit, rather than a shoreline setback variance.

Seeking a variance is more costly and time consuming and allows for the public to comment on the request; the process also requires the property owner to conduct an environmental assessment of the wall’s potential impact.

Green contends that the current process is overly burdensome for property owners seeking to build structures that pose no significant impact. Minor shoreline structures cannot interfere with drainage, tidal action or other beach processes; establish an artificial shoreline; or block public views and access. Green insists his walls meet the criteria for minor shoreline structure permits. The city, however, refused to grant him after-the-fact permits; an official said such permits are for small, easy-to-remove structures, not permanent rock walls like the ones built on Green’s land.

In opposing its passage, the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting described Bill 17 as inconsistent with state law, contrary to city ordinances and administrative rules and dismissive of a state agency with authority over coastal zone management. That should be enough to do in this measure, but environmentalists and others also wisely weighed in.

The Sierra Club, on top of DPP’s concerns, pointed out that the bill fails basic common sense. Given all we know now about rising sea levels, the city should be discouraging — not encouraging — this type of construction. Shoreline hardening, which is known to alter coastlines and spur erosion, should be the exception, not the rule.

It’s understandable that landowners like Green want to preserve their properties and their homes, but individual property rights should not supersede the public interest — nor the rights of neighboring landowners, who could be affected.

Although Bill 17 sailed through the Council’s Zoning and Planning Committee, we expect it will meet its deserved fate when the full Council takes it up next month. Oahu’s shoreline is far too precious to be treated so capriciously.