The biggest beach replenishment project ever undertaken in the state is taking shape at Iroquois Point, where nine big T-shaped rock groins are going in along nearly a mile of shoreline.
Five or six of the T heads are in, and sand placement is expected to start the first week of April.
It’s a lot of rock and a lot of sand.
Approximately 22,000 cubic yards of stone, enough to fill 61⁄2 Olympic-size swimming pools; and 80,000 cubic yards of sand, or enough for 27 Olympic pools, will be used in the project. The Ewa Beach effort began in October.
By comparison, the Iroquois Point beach restoration is about 31⁄2 times bigger than the more than $2.3 million Waikiki Beach sand nourishment work completed in April 2012.
Texas-based Hunt Cos. took on the $14 million project when it still owned the beachfront 1,450-unit rental community known as The Waterfront at Puuloa.
In 2012, San Francisco-based Carmel Partners bought the homes and lease on the Navy land for $311 million, officials said. Hunt has continued with the beach restoration project.
Beaches in Hawaii are under stress, with approximately 24 percent of Oahu’s beaches experiencing sand loss or degradation since the 1940s, according to Sea Engineering Inc., which has worked on both the Waikiki and Iroquois Point projects.
At Iroquois Point there was a triple threat.
Old aerial photos and other records showed that the beach in the area receded as much as 130 feet between 1928 and 1961 and an additional 150 feet from 1961 to 2003, according to a Navy environmental assessment.
The eroded sand was carried to the east and into the already narrow channel entrance to Pearl Harbor, which lies at one end of The Waterfront at Puuloa community.
So much sand washed into the channel that 125 feet was added to the vegetation line, landlocking previously used docks and a channel marker, the Navy environmental report said.
At Iroquois Point, 16 of the homes built in 1960 were lost to advancing erosion, and others were threatened, officials said.x
The beach itself was a mess. Various efforts using rocks, a sand berm, concrete masonry, a wooden wall, timber piles, concrete blocks and a retaining wall were tried — unsuccessfully — in 1978, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1993, 1995, 2004 and 2009.
Eroded earthen fill created dirt plumes in the water, old concrete sewer lines lay broken and construction reinforcing bars rusted away on the shoreline.
The detritus of past beach restoration efforts is being removed, and the series of T groins — intended to trap the wayward sand — is marching westward from the Pearl Harbor channel.
In 2007 the Navy performed maintenance dredging in the Pearl Harbor channel entrance and stockpiled 22,000 cubic yards of sand that could be used for the beach stabilization.
An additional 60,000 cubic yards was dredged from the west side of the channel using a drag line and was stockpiled for use at Iroquois Point beach.
Sections of the beach are kept open as excavators and haulers move bigger rocks — sometimes 2 tons each — on top of smaller ones to form the T breakwaters whose stems (perpendicular to shore) are 140 feet long and heads (parallel to shore) are 100 to 200 feet long.
Karen Lehmkuhler, who has lived at The Waterfront at Puuloa for three years, hit the beach Friday despite overcast skies and the heavy equipment moving about behind construction fencing down the shoreline.
"It’s fascinating to watch how they are changing the way the whole thing is looking," Lehmkuhler said. "I’m excited to see what the beach will look like when they are done."
She admitted some disappointment that only portions of the beach are open, but added that "you have to live through the bad part to get to the great part. So that’s OK. It’s worth it."
Sherlyann Sedeno, who has lived in the rental community for nearly four years, said she’s all for the beach improvements. "When I first moved here, it (the beach) wasn’t nice at all," she said. "It was just so much rocks out there. Just yucky."
Rusted construction rebar protruded here and there, she recalls.
"It looks like it’s becoming a safer beach," she said.
In 2003, under special legislation by Congress as part of a Ford Island master development plan, the former Navy Iroquois Point housing was turned over to Hunt.
Under the $84 million deal with the Navy, Hunt and its Ford Island Properties received land and housing on Oahu — including the Iroquois Point property — in exchange for infrastructure and other improvements on Ford Island.
Steve Colon, president of Hunt’s Hawaii development division, previously said that the Navy informed the developer back in 2003 "that there was chronic beach erosion that we should be aware of and that it was a significant dollar amount to fix."
Colon, who was not involved in the project at the time, said Friday it was his understanding that "there may have been some horse-trading at the end (of the negotiations) that allowed the price to be lowered some because of the beach restoration."
"We felt that we needed to fix the beach if we were going to be owning that property long term, which at the time was the plan," he said. The lease with the Navy did not require the beach restoration, he added.
Thomas Lee, vice president of development for Hunt in Hawaii, said the developer invested more than eight years of time and permitting expenses for the beach project before it decided to sell the property.
Carmel Partners, the new owners, "wanted us to follow through with it (the restoration)," Colon said.
The sale proceeds are helping fund the work, according to Hunt.
Carmel said it rents 1,450 of the renovated former military homes, many of which have big yards and towering shade trees, for between $1,800 and $3,800 per month.
The Navy’s environmental assessment said the rock groins are likely to result "in a greater diversity and biomass of fishes and crustaceans."
"Might even become a good place to snorkel," observed Lehmkuhler, the beachgoer.
All nine rock groins are expected to be in the water by the end of the month and ready for sand placement in April. Completion of the project is expected in mid- to late summer, Lee said.
"The Navy is pleased that Hunt developed this project to stabilize the beach area and maintain the adjacent land that is under a 99-year lease with the Navy," Agnes Tauyan, a spokeswoman for Navy Region Hawaii, said in an email. "The fact that the dredged sand from the harbor can be used to fill in the new T-groin cells is advantageous for the project."
Colon said Navy ship drivers and harbor pilots "are really happy because by carving out the sand and doing the dredging that we did and clearing all that kiawe, these guys are telling us that it’s so much easier for them to go into the Pearl Harbor channel right now."
