Erosion troubles at Sunset and Kuhio beaches have rekindled fears about a chronic problem that isn’t going away.

Experts say too much development is nudged up against the beach in Hawaii at a time when sea level is on the rise, a predicament that will inevitably lead to a growing number of coastal erosion emergencies.

For beachfront homeowners, dealing with the uncertainty and ominous power of Mother Nature is hard enough. But grappling with the array of government regulators and their requirements can evoke anger and frustration.

As it did last week at Sunset Beach:

"We deserve support," declared Fred Patacchia Sr. as the surf was seemingly taking aim at his son’s home. "This is something we have to live with, and our hands seem to be tied from doing anything. I just want to say, ‘Hey, government of Hawaii, what are you gonna do to help these people?’ "

Some officials say the anger and frustration is not surprising considering the divided regulatory responsibilities at the ocean’s edge, a situation that can lead to confusion and delays.

The state is responsible for the beach up to the highest wash of the waves, and the counties are responsible for the land next to it. While the law and legal precedent describe where different responsibilities lie, uncertainty can remain, in part, because of the transitory nature of the shore.

Add in the different state, county and even federal agencies that may demand some form of regulatory input, and the effort required of homeowners to protect their property can be burdensome.

"It’s a complicated regulatory structure," said Dolan Eversole, Sea Grant Coastal Storms Program coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Under times of emergency, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources takes the lead and works to expedite approvals for temporary protective measures. But the primary mission of the DLNR’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands is to protect "coastal resources," not the structures being threatened, said Eversole, a former lead geologist with the coastal lands office.

It can be perplexing, he said, especially when homeowners want to put up a sea wall or other type of rock or concrete structure that can be detrimental to the beach in the long run.

THE COMPLEXITY of divided regulatory responsibility is underscored by what it takes to legally install a beach ladder, or a set of wooden beach stairs, which many oceanfront property owners use to access the shore.

Because the beach ladder typically starts on private properly and extends to the beach, government approvals are required from both city and state regulators, a process that can last anywhere from three months to a year, depending on different variables, said Chris Conger, a coastal geologist with Sea Engineering Inc.

"We like to encourage people to use beach stairs," Eversole said. "They prevent erosion."

But with so much hassle necessary to go through the regulatory process, it’s no coincidence so many illegal beach ladders are found around the state, he said.

Eversole, a surfer and former Sunset Beach lifeguard, contends Hawaii should put an end to the jurisdictional confusion at the beach by establishing an all-encompassing agency to handle all the land use issues in the coastal zone, from the land next to the shore all the way out to the state’s 3-mile jurisdiction.

The idea — similar to the California Coastal Commission — would streamline the regulatory process and avoid duplicative efforts and back-and-forth delays between agencies, he said.

The agency would also help put an end to the conflicting objectives of the state, which generally works to protect the beach, and the counties, which are historically more lenient in allowing shoreline structures, Eversole said.

But Leo Asuncion, planning and program manager with the state’s Coastal Zone Management program, doesn’t think much of the idea, saying it would simply create an extra layer of government.

He said the CZM program, a part of the state Office of Planning, works closely with the various coastal agencies to coordinate their efforts in support of long-held state objectives: to provide for a balanced approach to management, use, protection and development of the coastal zone.

What’s more, he said, of the 35 states with coastal programs, 25 have a setup just like Hawaii’s.

"Maybe an overall commission would be useful to take care of conflicts between agencies, but we already have an interagency group that talks about conflicts. We already have a venue," Asuncion said.

Art Challacombe, deputy director of Hono­lulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting, agreed that a new coastal zone agency isn’t necessary and might even add to the confusion over jurisdiction.

Challacombe said in an email that while there is a dual jurisdiction on the coast, his department works closely with state officials to ensure that the shoreline is protected under state and county laws.

Whether a new coastal agency is in the cards or not, Hawaii should be seeing many more cries for help from beachfront property owners in the coming years if most coastal scientists are right.

A University of Hawaii study published two months ago concluded that sea-level rise will be the primary driving force behind beach erosion in the future. Sea level has been going up around Hawaii at a rate of nearly a tenth of an inch a year for the greater part of the last century, according to the study, but the rate has increased recently and will worsen in the coming decades.

The study also documented that 78 percent of Maui’s beaches eroded over the past century with an average shoreline erosion rate of about 5 inches per year, while 52 percent of Oahu beaches eroded with an average shoreline erosion rate of 1.2 inches per year.

Charles "Chip" Fletcher, the UH geology and geophysics professor who led the study, said that when you look at any one erosion hot spot, like Sunset Beach or Kuhio Beach, you can’t just chalk it up to sea-level rise alone.

"But as a background condition, these kinds of problems will come more frequently," Fletcher said. "They will come more severely and they will be more widespread."

For years Fletcher has been urging politicians to take the problem of beach erosion seriously. He has lobbied officials to come up with innovative ways to purchase private oceanfront land and to widen beach parks.

Partly in response to Fletcher’s work, Maui and Kauai counties have strengthened their ocean setback requirements to better reflect historical shoreline erosion rates. The shoreline setback is the line past which no structures or coastal alterations are allowed.

But on Oahu the 40-foot setback has remained the same for decades, and houses have been allowed to be rebuilt even closer to shore.

Fletcher fears that if the trend continues, powerful financial incentives will conspire to accelerate the construction of beachfront structures, and Oahu will end up with rock walls rather than sandy beaches.

Fletcher said there’s some validity to creating an overall agency to take charge of land use in the coastal zone. The idea should be studied, he said, because right now beaches essentially lie in a jurisdictional no man’s land.

"The dune, the beach and the offshore are all one continuous environment, but they’re managed by different entities," he said.