The landowner of a popular Kauai swimming hole where five visitors have died in the past five years said Wednesday it has decided to fence the area and put up no-trespassing signs.
Grove Farm said it’s blocking access to Kipu Falls in the interest of public safety. It is facing several lawsuits over the site.
"It’s a very difficult decision," Grove Farm Vice President Marissa Sandblom said in a phone interview. "It’s one we definitely didn’t come to lightly."
Most of those killed jumped off the top of the waterfall into a pool about 20 feet below, then drowned while trying to swim to shore. Others have suffered serious injuries, including paralysis, rope burns and perforated eardrums.
Residents have been swimming at Kipu Falls, apparently without many problems, for years. Tourists began going there in large numbers after travel guidebooks began mentioning the place in the 1990s.
The announcement came a month after an Associated Press report highlighted the deaths and injuries.
Sandblom said Grove Farm decided to block access only after exhausting alternatives.
Last year, the company backed a bill at the state Legislature that would have held writers and publishers of travel guides liable if a reader is injured or dies while trespassing on private property they have depicted. The bill died after publishers protested it would violate their First Amendment rights.
Grove Farm also tried to give the land to Kauai County for use as a park. But the county didn’t want the liability of owning the property, which is just a few miles’ drive, followed by a five-minute walk, from some of Kauai’s biggest resorts.
The company began installing an 8-foot-high metal fence on Wednesday. It will extend nearly 800 feet around its side of the Kipu Falls land. Rice Ranch, which owns the other side of Kipu Falls, won’t have a fence, but it is more difficult for the public to access the falls from its property.
Grove Farm is also putting up signs warning that trespassers will be prosecuted, and is placing boulders on the side of the private road near the waterfall to prevent people from parking their cars there.
Grove Farm has hired a few off-duty police officers to stand at the private road for several days starting Wednesday to hand out information and explain to people that it is private property and why it is being blocked off.
Sandblom said these steps will expose Grove Farm to a higher standard of liability, but she said the company weighed that against keeping the status quo. The company used to run a sugar plantation but now develops and manages commercial and residential properties.
"This is the right thing to do," she said.
Dr. Monty Downs, an emergency room physician at Kauai’s Wilcox Hospital, who has treated people injured at Kipu Falls, commended Grove Farm.
"Most anybody who witnessed the experiences of the families where someone is killed would be glad to know that another family is not going to go through that at Kipu Falls," Downs said.
He said the ideal plan would be to keep Kipu Falls open to locals and close it off to visitors. "But we can’t figure out any way to make that possible," he said.
