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The Board of Land and Natural Resources on Friday ordered two Portlock homeowners to remove seawalls fronting their oceanfront properties and fined them each $15,000 for the illegal encroachments onto the public beach.
The seawalls are stacked on the only beach left along this coastline that wraps around to Hanauma Bay and is lined with luxury homes.
Seawalls have had a devastating effect on Hawaii’s sandy shorelines, and scientists warn that by midcentury Oahu could lose 40% of its beaches due to shoreline armoring as the state faces a projected 3.2-foot rise in sea level by 2060.
The Land Board, which oversees the public shoreline, adopted a so-called no-tolerance policy in 1999 that forbid new seawalls.
At a meeting Friday the board determined that the walls along the two properties at Maunalua Bay were unauthorized.
Robert Wells earlier this year had been facing a $65,000 fine. But he argued that the seawall in question belonged to his neighbor. The Land Board deferred the matter to give state officials more time to investigate property boundaries.
On Friday, Sam Lemmo, who heads the Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, which regulates the shoreline, told board members that his office had indeed mixed up the property boundaries but that Wells still had an illegal seawall in front of his home. His office expanded the enforcement action to the neighboring lot owned by Gohana LLC and is looking to take action against another neighbor as well.
When Wells bought his Portlock home in the late 1990s, he was ordered by the state to remove an illegal seawall on the property, which he did. But during Friday’s board meeting he acknowledged that in subsequent years he repeatedly stacked rocks in front of the property to protect it from the ocean and more recently had brought in new rocks to supplement the wall.
The Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands had actually notified Wells in 2009 that there were no records indicating that the rock wall had been authorized, and recommended its immediate removal. But the office never followed up with an actual enforcement action, and it remained.
“Unfortunately, I admittedly dropped the ball in that case,” said Lemmo. “For some reason it got lost. It fell between the cracks.”
Lemmo recommended that Wells face a reduced fine of $20,000 and be ordered to remove the seawall within 90 days or face additional fines of $15,000 a day.
Wells was represented by attorney Forest Jenkins and Peter Young, a former Land Board chairman who often represents private homeowners in such matters. They argued that the fine should be reduced to $5,000 but that instead of having to pay it, Wells be allowed to put that money toward the cost of removing the illegal seawall. They also asked that he not have to remove the seawall until a Hawaii Kai marina project gets underway. That project plans to deposit dredged sand along the beach, which is expected to stymie erosion.
The Land Board voted to reduce the fine to $15,000 and require the seawall be removed 30 days before the marina project begins or by the end of this year at the latest.
Jenkins then requested
a contested case, which would allow Wells to challenge the board’s decision, though said that it was just to reserve that option.
The Land Board levied the same fine on Wells’ neighbor Rachel Geicke and her company Gohana LLC, which purchased the property in May 2020.
Geicke’s attorney, Robert Brown, said she had purchased the property with the illegal seawall in May 2020. The state told her she needed to take down the wall to determine the shoreline boundaries. Geicke took down the wall, got the certified shoreline but then quickly rebuilt it on the public beach.
Brown said that it was an honest mistake, that Geicke didn’t intend to violate state laws and policies and that she was working to remove the wall as quickly as possible.
“This is not a situation of ill will or bad faith. Neither Gohana or Ms. Geicke were trying to defy Hawaii law,” said Brown. “Ms. Geicke is a lover of the environment.”
Not all board members bought that.
After being ordered by the state to remove the unauthorized wall, Land Board member Chris Yuen said he doubted that state officials then conveyed to Geicke it was OK to rebuild it.
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