Campers trashing Makua, state says

Faced with huge weekend crowds and growing piles of rubbish at Makua Beach, state parks officials say they plan to impose restrictions on camping at the remote coastal area near Kaena Point.

State Parks Administrator Curt Cottrell said the burgeoning popularity of the Makua section of Kaena Point State Park is making the area sick.

A day after a busy Fourth of July weekend, Cottrell held a news conference at the beach to announce that officials would be seeking to establish a dozen or more fee-required camping areas to bring down the number of weekend visitors.

What’s more, the area likely will be closed for an undetermined period this fall while the beach is cleaned and disinfected, he said.

“We need to reduce this insane amount of opala that is left behind and start to heal, restore and clean up the resource,” he said. (“Opala” means “trash” in Hawaiian.)

Cottrell described the problem as a potential public health issue.

“Until we conduct further tests, we can’t say whether it’s even safe for people to be in the area, because the soils may be contaminated or infected,” he said.

With bags of rubbish stacked behind him, Cottrell spoke on a bluff overlooking the long and spacious white-sand beach.

There was a spike in visitors over the weekend, he said, with an estimated 2,000 or more July Fourth revelers crowded into an area with no restrooms, no toilets and no water system.

Members of the media Tuesday were led on a tour of a nearby camping spot with more than a dozen rubbish bags left scattered about, along with a cooler, clothes and several chairs. A temporary latrine had been dug behind a tree.

“I don’t know whose campsite this is, but they should be really ashamed of the way they left it — for someone else to clean up,” said Alan Carpenter, assistant parks administrator.

It is illegal to camp at Makua, but the state has allowed it on weekends in a long-standing informal agreement with the community.

“Part of the problem is every weekend we clean up the rubbish, and every weekend they come back and leave more,” Cottrell said. “Some people are good, responsible. They clean up after themselves. Unfortunately, not everyone does that.”

Cottrell said he has contacted area lawmakers and will be talking with community members about long-term solutions over the summer.

He noted that a lack of manpower complicates efforts to maintain the area and enforce rules. The state employs only one maintenance worker for the Kaena region. By contrast, the City and County of Honolulu has 135 maintenance workers covering county beach parks and campgrounds from Aiea to Makaha.

The parks administrator said a growing number of natural areas are being overrun by the public in Hawaii, including Kauai’s remote Polihale State Park.

“We call it the end-of-the-world syndrome,” he said, explaining that remote and beautiful places have become wildly popular thanks in part to social media.

Cottrell said he hopes to replicate the success of recent measures taken to curb the impacts on Hawaii island’s Kiholo Bay, which grew so popular that 200 to 300 people were driving on the beach and abusing the area, including threatening archaeological sites.

Kiholo Bay was shut down for eight weeks while officials established eight legal campsites and limited use to about 80 people a night.

“It essentially solved the problem,” he said.

At Makua, social media has helped to drive its popularity, Cottrell said. Several months ago there was an impromptu “rave” on the beach attended by about 500 partygoers.

Micah Doane, founder of Protectors of Paradise, said he has seen a wave of illegal abuse at Makua Beach in recent years, from off-roading on the sand to huge pallet fires in the night.

Doane held a bucket of nails his group collected from only one weekend, the remains of the pallet fires.

“This place is infected really bad,” Doane said. “The infection is just getting worse and worse and worse. Before you know it, the beautiful beach of Makua won’t be here anymore.”

Carpenter said he drove to Makua on Saturday night and counted between 500 and 800 cars on the road and near the beach.

“I was frankly shocked at the sheer number of cars and people,” he said. “I’ve camped all over Hawaii, all over the mainland, and never in my life have I seen as dense of number of people in vehicles in a legal campsite as I saw at Makua Saturday night. It’s way too much.”

The best thing to do, Carpenter said, is to limit numbers and limit the impacts to create a better camping experience for everyone.

“Is it really that much fun to be here with 1,000 to 2,000 people where everybody is wall to wall?” he said.

With Labor Day coming up, Cottrell implored the public to give the beach a break.

“Please, please, please take out all your rubbish, your opala,” he said. “Manage your waste better. Help us protect this place better.”