Bills that would place limit on emergency beach sandbags in Hawaii shelved

Bills that would limit how long oceanfront property owners can keep stacks of emergency sandbags and heavy tarps along the public beach to protect their homes, resorts and condos from being damaged by waves are dead for the year.

The emergency protections have increasingly littered Hawaii’s shorelines, including treasured beaches on Oahu’s North Shore and the west side of Maui, angering beach protection advocates and scientists who warn that the shoreline hardening can be just as damaging as seawalls, which have caused about one-quarter of the beaches on Oahu, Maui and Kauai to disappear.

But legislative leaders shelved bills this month that would limit how long property owners can maintain the structures. Instead, the lawmakers will give the state Department of Land and Natural Resources time to address concerns about the emergency approvals on its own.

Legally, the emergency protections can remain in place only temporarily. But the Department of Land and Natural Resources has allowed dozens of property owners to keep sandbags and black tarps anchored by long sand-filled tubes, referred to as burritos, in place for years, and sometimes decades, after issuing repeated approvals or losing track of them, an investigation in December by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica found.

The department has said it’s looking to revise its administrative rules relating to the permits, but hasn’t said what changes it may be considering.

Senate Bill 1310 would have set a hard deadline of three years for removing the emergency sandbags and burritos, while forbidding any extensions. It would have also increased fines for homeowners and contractors who install structures without the state’s permission. Both could have faced fines of $25,000 for every day that an illegal structure remained on a public beach.

The bill was poised to be heard Feb. 12 by the Senate Water and Land Committee, but state Sen. Lorraine Ino­uye (D, Kaupulehu-­Waimea-North Hilo), who chairs the committee, deleted it from the agenda two days before the hearing.

The measure was opposed by numerous oceanfront homeowners on Oahu’s North Shore where burritos have proliferated over the past three years. In written testimony submitted in anticipation of the hearing, many of the homeowners challenged the assertion that burritos and sandbags would damage the North Shore beaches, and argued the state should allow them to protect their homes with seawalls and sand replenishment, as they have for the hotels in Waikiki.

“We are equal citizens by law and should be afforded the same remedies that have been granted to the big hotels, resorts and other owners for the same issue,” wrote Glenn Wachtel. “I would also like to add that the burritos that have been installed on the North Shore do not, I repeat do not, contribute to erosion.”

Coastal scientists say that any shoreline hardening structure, whether it be a seawall or mound of sandbags, along a shoreline that is trying to naturally push inland will damage the beach. As waves hit a hardened shoreline, they pull sand off the beach and prevent it from being replenished.

Alarmed by the loss of public beaches, the board that oversees the Department of Land and Natural Resources adopted a no- tolerance policy in 1999 for new seawalls. Property owners can still get permission to erect a wall on the public beach to protect their property, but it’s an arduous approval process and the applicant has to show how the seawall won’t harm the environment and public beach, a public-trust resource. The property owner also must pay to lease the public land from the state, which cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Property owners with emergency sandbags and burritos skirt this entire process. The approvals are designed to mitigate hazardous situations during an emergency. But property owners have instead been able to rely on them for providing long-term protections for their properties.

While Inouye declined to hear SB 1310 this year, she plans to work with the Department of Land and Natural Resources to come up with potential legislation to address the issue of beach loss next year, according to her office manager, who said Inouye was too busy with hearings for an interview.

House Bill 246 would have instructed the Land Board to adopt a three year deadline for the emergency structures. The bill was introduced by state Rep. David Tarnas (D, Kaupulehu-Waimea- Halaula), who chairs the House Water and Land Committee.

Tarnas said he deferred his own bill with the expectation that the Department of Land and Natural Resources will come out with proposed rules by the end of this year. He said the emergency permits don’t comply with the legislative intent of beach protection laws.

“These are supposed to be temporary. Temporary means time limited and not decades,” said Tarnas.

He said if the department doesn’t come out with new rules to address the concerns this year, he will again introduce legislation.

“There is a lot of public pressure coming from members of the public, from members of the Legislature, that this really can’t continue,” said Tarnas.