Editorial: Cut red tape on beach protection

Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) has been wrestling with the problem for years, but in the tug of war between beaches and barriers, beaches are losing. Oahu’s beaches are shrinking — and seawalls, boulder barriers and sand-filled beach “burritos” fronting portions of the shoreline are speeding up the process.

It is time for the state to create a comprehensive plan for beach protection, and it is past time to implement updated rules and rev up enforcement, in keeping with DLNR’s mission of preserving and protecting Hawaii’s oceans, beaches and shorelines.

The state has changed practices over the past two years, prodded by a 2020 reporting series conducted by the Star-Advertiser in partnership with national investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica. Shortly thereafter, DLNR’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands (OCCL) began revising rules for “emergency” approvals of sandbags and burritos as barriers between structures and the sea, and those rules have been drafted. Owners selling property along the coastline must also now reveal the risks of rising sea levels, thanks to a law taking effect this year.

Nonetheless, the state has not been treating shoreline issues with the diligence required.

Permit violations, such as failing to remove sandbags and burritos after emergency shore-hardening permissions expire, drag through a hearing process that can take months or years. The “temporary” burritos, along with illegally placed or expanded seawalls or piles of boulders, can become seemingly permanent, despite violation notices. Property owners exploit the molasses-slow contested-case process by appealing each decision; worse, some structures evade or fall off the radar of regulators.

Climate change and sea level rise are now forcing the issue, and problems with beach and shoreline erosion and inundated coastal areas are only expected to grow.

The state must take the urgency of the situation into account, moving forward with an island-by-island analysis and publicly vetted plan to protect beaches and give islanders — including shorefront property owners — the ability to plan for the future.

In conjunction with that process, DLNR and the state Attorney General must revise the contested-case hearing process, streamlining and otherwise speeding up the steps so that it no longer serves as a sure-fire way to delay action indefinitely.

The problem is only growing more dire.

Left undisturbed, many of Hawaii’s beaches would naturally migrate landward, but when interventions such as beach burritos — long, oversized, sand-filled bags, typically topped with thick tarps of plastic — are placed as barriers between a property and the encroaching shoreline, beaches simply disappear instead. Waves pull sand away from the beach, while the barriers block sand mauka of the barriers from replenishing what’s lost.

Hawaii is also experiencing stronger storms and rising sea levels, which wear at beachfronts, and global warming will exacerbate those problems. It’s now estimated that Oahu could lose 40% of its beaches by the middle of this century. That is not a problem to kick down the road.

The OCCL reports that it has largely stopped issuing emergency permits to place sandbags and burritos, while new rules for issuing the emergency permits are currently under review by the Attorney General’s Office. OCCL Administrator Michael Cain told the Star-Advertiser earlier this summer that proposed rules “differentiate between immediate emergencies and ongoing, unmanaged, hazardous conditions.”

That’s a good start. Next, let’s see an end to endless contested cases, as the state faces up to the need for an action plan that takes a warming planet into account.