Hawaii’s Land Board cracks down on illegal seawalls

Members of Hawaii’s Board of Land and Natural Resources expressed growing concern Friday about the loss of Hawaii’s beaches to homeowners erecting illegal seawalls as they ordered several structures to be removed along beaches on Oahu and Molokai and fined the property owners.

The situation has grown particularly tense on Oahu’s North Shore where iconic beaches have increasingly become littered with illegal boulders, walls and emergency sandbags and tarps churned up and ripped apart by powerful waves.

Famous surfer Liam McNamara and wife Brandee were facing fines of $35,000 for a seawall fronting their Sunset Beach home. Officials with the Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands said the original wall, built decades ago, was never authorized, and previous property owners had repaired it many times without permission. When the wall largely failed last year, the McNamaras brought in a cement truck to reinforce it and rebuilt parts of the structure.

Liam McNamara blamed the state for the emergency situation he says he found himself in, telling board members that if the department had allowed him to push sand in front of his home, the wall wouldn’t have failed. As a solution, he suggested he be able to construct a rock wall in front of the house.

However, Sam Lemmo, who has led the coastal lands office for two decades, told the Land Board that the home had been distressed for years, and he was clear about what effect walls will have on the treasured North Shore beaches.

“If you allow them to build seawalls, I guarantee you, I put my career on this, this beach resource is going to be gone for the next generation … for this generation. And this is not acceptable,” he said. “This is not a beach resource that we can just let go. It’s too valuable.”

Land Board Chairwoman Suzanne Case expressed sympathy with the McNamaras’ plight but stressed it was the department’s responsibility to protect the state’s beaches, rather than private property, and that ultimately homeowners needed to retreat from the shoreline.

“The only way to protect the beach is for the homes to be gone, and you are just the tip of the sword here in a very, very difficult situation that is very, very important to the public,” she said.

But the Land Board shied away from using the McNamaras as a deterrent for other homeowners thinking about erecting illegal shoreline armoring, and fined them only $5,000 of the $35,000 penalty that the coastal lands office was seeking. Board members said the rest of the proposed fine should go toward the cost of removing the wall.

Two board members, James Gomes and Kaiwi Yoon, voted against the recommendation altogether. Gomes said he believed the McNamaras were just trying to repair the wall to safeguard their property.

The Land Board in 1999 adopted a no-tolerance policy toward seawalls amid growing alarm about the loss of Hawaii’s beaches. Oahu has lost about one-quarter of its beaches to shoreline hardening, a figure that scientists say could grow to 40% by 2050 if the state doesn’t enforce stricter policies.

The Land Board deferred making a decision Friday on another alleged violation on Sunset Beach. Rodney Youman is facing a fine of $32,000 for a large mound of rocks that state officials found in front of his home last year. Youman told Land Board members that he recently brought in an excavator to remove the rocks, though conceded that contractors may not have been able to retrieve all of them because they were buried in 20 feet of sand due to changing shoreline conditions. Coastal lands officials also say Youman installed a new burrito system, consisting of sandbags and tarps, without their permission.

Land Board members asked staff to find out more about what rocks might still exist on the shoreline and the burrito system.

Land Board members took a tougher stance when it came to a seawall in front of a property owned by George Peabody in Kaunakakai, Molokai. He was fined $80,000 and ordered to remove the wall. Peabody didn’t attend the virtual meeting, which was conducted via video. Coastal lands officials said Peabody built an illegal seawall in front of his home in the late 1990s and then rebuilt it again more recently after it failed.

Another property owner in Punaluu on Oahu was fined $17,000 and ordered to remove a rock wall that coastal officials say he constructed last year.

Land Board members deferred another case, in Portlock on the southern shore of Oahu, amid confusion about which property owners were responsible for a wall of rocks that spanned several lots.

Kai Nishiki, an advocate for protecting Hawaii’s shorelines, said after the board meeting that she appreciated Case signaling the need to retreat from the shoreline and urged board members to regularly visit the state’s shorelines to observe for themselves the damage that is occurring.

“There is a good reason why fines are large. Our beaches and reefs are highly valued and also highly sensitive areas where irreparable damage can occur to our priceless public-trust resources,” she said.

Homeowners that don’t comply with the Land Board’s orders could face additional fines of $15,000 a day. Several property owners indicated they might appeal the Land Board’s decisions, which could greatly prolong the process.