Chip Fletcher and Colin Lee recently proposed buying out of approximately 50 properties near Sunset Beach to protect the coastline (“Use surplus to protect Sunset Beach,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Dec. 25). Let every taxpayer hope the Legislature rejects their pleas.

Buyouts will be necessary to protect our beaches. And one might be forgiven for concluding that since our governments won’t enforce the law, we should pivot to something they’re actually good at: wasting our money. But the buyouts proposed by Lee and Fletcher set a dangerous precedent, despite their protestations to the contrary.

They propose to spend an amount almost equal to the annual budget of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources — the agency responsible for most of our shoreline — to protect a mere 0.27 miles of our approximately 730 miles of coastline.

As proposed, their buyouts would encourage speculative real estate investment. The lesson from their buyout is that if enough people build enough illegal seawalls, the state will buy them out at whatever obscene price their seawalls allowed them to command.

Makana Hicks

Makiki

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