Beach users gave good reviews Thursday to the just-completed sand replenishment project that widened Waikiki Beach from the Duke Kahanamoku statue to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
"It’s an improvement," said Punchbowl resident Jacques du Vol, sitting under his beach umbrella. "My tax dollars are at work."
State Department of Land and Natural Resources spokeswoman Deborah Ward said that as of Wednesday, sand recovery and truck hauling operations were finished.
"The contractor will begin demobilizing equipment and deconstructing the dewatering basin in the east Kuhio swim basin," she said.
Workers will also be removing small rocks in the sand daily for about a week, Ward said.
The sand widening project, part of regular beach maintenance for Waikiki, began in mid-March, with a plan to restore the beach area to its 1985 width.
The contractor took the sand from ocean areas offshore and brought it ashore on the western side of the Kuhio Beach crib walls. The preliminary cost estimate is $2.5 million.
The project was larger than a prior recycling effort in 2006-07, when state officials recovered 10,000 cubic yards of sand from the sea and pumped it onto the shore within the Kuhio Beach crib walls, the state said.
The state planned to have the sand dried under the sun and blown through a pipe to various areas along some 1,730 feet of beach. But that method proved to be too slow, and the sand was loaded into trucks and hauled to those locations.
Du Vol, a daily visitor to Waikiki, said the beach has been widened adequately enough so visitors can spread out even at high tide. He said before the improvement, visitors were forced to move close to the boundary walls of hotels in some places.
Frequent beach users said at least for now the new sand is more compact and has more small rocks.
Jerry Westenhaver, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Resort & Spa, said the sand replenishing work went well, considering Waikiki is one of the busiest beaches in the world.
"We really didn’t have a lot of complaints. … It really worked out pretty well," he said. "We’re excited to have the project done. It was handled professionally."
Westenhaver said the sand is a bit gray, but he’s been told by University of Hawaii scientists that it will eventually bleach out and turn white.
Surf instructors who work at beach stands said they had mixed feelings about the sand restoration and that although the plan was to widen the beach by an additional 37 feet, some improved areas had already experienced a loss of sand.
Louis Ferreira, who teaches surfing, said his visitor activity was down about 20 percent to 30 percent because the beach was closed for half a day frequently during the week.
David AhQuin, another surf instructor, said he knows the improvement is good for business and there are a lot more people on the beach because of the widening project. But AhQuin said a few big storms can have an effect on the beach, and summer brings larger waves from the south.
"I just hope it lasts," he said.
