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The Surfrider Foundation’s 2021 State of the Beach Report gives Hawaii a grade of “B,” moving up from the “C” it received last year and ranking better than 67% of the coastal states surveyed, the national nonprofit environmental group announced last week.
The report, issued as Gov. David Ige led a Hawaii delegation at the global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, focused on preparedness for climate change effects such as extreme weather and sea-level rise.
But Lauren Blickley, Surfrider Foundation Hawaii regional manager and the mother of two young children, said Hawaii needs to go for an “A” for the sake of future generations.
“We did improve, but we still have work to do,” she said Tuesday by phone from her Maui home.
Blickley attributed Hawaii’s higher grade to the passage of two state laws: SB 474, requiring sea-level rise disclosure in real estate transactions, and HB 243, requiring the state Office of Planning and Sustainable Development and state agencies to work together to protect coastal resources by “identifying areas vulnerable to the impacts of sea-level rise, assessing options for mitigating these impacts and coordinating how to adapt to climate change.”
From a national perspective, she added, SB 474 proved to be groundbreaking legislation as “the first of its kind in the U.S., so Hawaii just kind of moved the mark.”
But what weighed against Hawaii, she said, was the state’s failure to enforce its shoreline protection laws against shoreline-hardening seawalls and sand bag “burritos,” which cause beach erosion.
“I think we’d have gotten a better grade if we had better enforcement,” she said.
For example, “emergency permitted sandbags are supposed to be for three years, but they’re lasting 10 years or longer in some cases,” she said. And although seawalls are now banned by state law, there’s a grandfathering loophole “with old seawalls, like (what is believed to be) the Obamas’ estate at Waimanalo — people are now getting variances to repair them but creating these massive, intense structures — so we want to address that.”
Blickley added that the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Office of Coastal and Conservation Lands was updating its administrative rules, which could result in better enforcement.
In addition to grading 30 coastal and Great Lakes states and Puerto Rico on their current laws and policies, implementation of regulations and communication with coastal zone management agencies, Surfrider’s State of the Beach Report evaluated their performance against criteria for sediment management, development, coastal armoring and sea-level rise.
Hawaii was among 11 states that earned an “A” or “B,” while the remaining 67% of states received “C,” “D” or “F” grades “and are therefore doing a ‘mediocre to poor’ job of protecting the nation’s coasts,” the organization said in its news release.
While Northeast and West Coast states earned a “B” average, the Southeast, Island and Mid-Atlantic states collectively earned a “C” grade overall and the Great Lakes and Gulf of Mexico states scored a “D” average.
The good news, the organization added, was that, compared to previous years, Surfrider’s 2021 State of the Beach Report, its fifth annual incarnation, saw the most significant improvements across the nation, with nine states improving their grades.
Previously, California was the only state to receive an “A” grade, but Maine and Maryland got top marks this year as well.
In addition to Hawaii, improved grades were given to Delaware, Texas, Connecticut, New Jersey, North Carolina, Georgia, Maine and Maryland.
This means more states are prepared to better manage coastlines and adapt to sea-level rise, which is essential, as 40% of Americans live within coastal zones, the foundation said. It noted that since its inaugural report in 2017, 11 states had made improvements to coastal policies, with advancements in sea-level rise planning and coastal resiliency in light of climate change.
But coastal development posed an ongoing threat, warned Stefanie Sekich-Quinn, Surfrider’s coastal preservation manager.
“While our 2021 report found an increase in grades, states continue to build new development every year in coastal hazard areas, which is extremely shortsighted and problematic,” Sekich-Quinn said in the release.
“In Hawaii, we recognize the issues more so than in many other states and coastal areas and we do tend to have a more progressive outlook in terms of climate change and its impacts,” Blickley said. “But we don’t always enforce the tools we have, and have to be creating the next set of tools.”
She said that in addition to enforcement issues, Surfrider Hawaii would be looking at how managed retreat and buyback programs for shoreline properties might be funded on a statewide level.
Read the report
The Surfrider Foundation’s 2021 State of the Beach Report can be viewed at: surfrider.org
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