In the Lineup: From surf to summit, Diamond Head needs nurture

My childhood friend, Frances Brown White, turned to me with a worried look during a holiday dinner at her mother’s home by the shore at Leahi, or Diamond Head, where she, her sisters, her children and her father were born and raised.

The situation with illegal campers on the makai side of Diamond Head Road was getting dangerous, White said: While walking their dogs, she and her husband had twice seen smoke from fires blazing in a big kiawe log on the beach below the cliffs.

“Thank goodness, the fires were put out quickly by surfers, but they were close to the dry hillside, and you can still see the burned brush mauka of the log,” White said. “And there are houses nearby.”

Squatters have long occupied the hillsides, but over the past two months some have started living in tents on the beach near the public footpath and showers, which are often fouled by excrement, she noted. In early December, the state Department of Health issued a warning about high levels of E. coli bacteria in the ­waters off Kaalawai Beach, which stretches from ­Kulamanu Place to Diamond Head Beach Park. The source of the contamination, my friend said, was human feces; while these cliffside hovels share breathtaking ocean views with some of Hawaii’s priciest homes, they lack toilets.

In 2017 and April 2018, tents and thousands of pounds of human waste and trash were removed by the state, which has jurisdiction mauka of the road, and the city, which is responsible for the makai side. The encampments were back within weeks.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources has revealed plans to make Diamond Head State Monument, which receives more than a million visitors a year, more pleasant and safe for walkers by reopening a long-closed Kapahulu tunnel into the crater as a pedestrian-only path, along with other measures.

“The Department is proposing improvements to the Diamond Head State Monument to enhance the visitor experience in and around the crater,” DLNR announced in a Dec. 21 release.

There was no mention of mitigating the pollution, stench and threats navigated by walkers, beachgoers and surfers all around the crater’s perimeter.

Another friend no longer sets out to walk around the crater before sunrise — she doesn’t feel safe, she said. She’s counted about 18 “regulars” living on the makai slopes and another 40 or so on the Kapahulu side where the pedestrian tunnel is proposed. Most of these campers have mental health or drug problems, she’s observed, and they’re unstable. She stopped her early walks when a man with whom she’d exchanged civil “good mornings” for years suddenly came out of the bushes zipping up his fly and hailed her as “Sweetie.”

Even by daylight, when Leahi is surrounded by walkers, runners, cyclists and tours, things get iffy. Early one December evening before sunset, as I walked past the lighthouse parking lot, a very tall, thin, barefoot, long-haired person started marching alongside me gesticulating, shouting, running ahead down the hill then looking back at me, waiting for me to catch up. I avoided eye contact.

Approaching Leahi Beach Park, the person kept to the sidewalk, so I ducked into the park amidst the safe company of a yoga class and sunset watchers. I continued on the sea wall to Makalei Beach Park, where three police cars pulled up and the officers asked if I’d seen a tall, thin woman throwing rocks — they were responding to several complaints. I told them what I’d encountered up the road.

SO MUCH of what we took for granted as a public commons, growing up in Hawaii, including the peace of our beach parks and sea, now seems tenuous, threatened and rare.

The state is seeking public participation on its Leahi plan through Jan. 14; you can learn more details, answer questions, register to win a prize and, best of all, add your own “other” suggestions.

“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.