An oceanfront property owner in Punaluu faces a $188,000 fine for numerous shoreline violations, including refusing to remove giant sandbags, heavy black tarps and boulders that form a tangled mess along the public beach in front of his home.

State coastal officials say owner Matthew Tang was given multiple warnings over the past year and a half, which he largely dismissed as he continued to harden the shoreline to protect his home. The fine is scheduled to be taken up today by the Board of Land and Natural Resources during its meeting.

Tang did not respond to requests for comment.

Tang purchased the property at 53-239 Kamehameha Highway in 2012 for $860,000, according to city property records. At the time, the property, as well as about half a dozen others along this stretch of coastline, had been suffering from erosion for years, according to state records.

Just months after buying the property, Tang was cited in February 2013 for allegedly placing rocks, sandbags, logs and other material along the public shoreline to protect his property, according to the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

But the state largely gave Tang and his neighbors a pass as they continued to harden the shoreline over the years, building bigger and bigger barriers that have come to completely block the public shoreline during much of the year.

Such shoreline hardening, which can destroy beaches, is largely forbidden in Hawaii. But property owners such as Tang have been able to skirt beach preservation laws by obtaining emergency authorizations from the state that have allowed them to keep temporary protections in place for years. DLNR repeatedly extended the protections or lost track of them, a 2020 investigation by the Honolulu Star- Advertiser and ProPublica found. DLNR has since been trying to crack down on the practice and is in the midst of numerous enforcement cases.

In September 2021, DLNR notified Tang that the emergency barriers in front of his home had expired in July 2020 and that state officials had found that there were new materials placed in the shoreline that were never authorized.

Tang responded to DLNR in a letter the following month, asking that he be allowed more time to keep the emergency materials in place as he continued to seek city approval to build a permanent seawall. The City and County of Honolulu had rejected an application for a seawall submitted by him and his neighbors in 2019, but the coalition of homeowners continued to fight the ruling.

During a visit to the property a year later, state officials found that Tang had not only failed to remove the materials, but had also built a stone wall along the public shoreline in front of his property, according to DLNR documents. They also found a crew working in the shoreline area with an excavator and saw that concrete had been poured to secure rocks and boulders.

Tang was issued a violation notice on Sept. 30, and DLNR says that shortly thereafter it became aware that Tang had been advertising the property for sale.

DLNR’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands is seeking to fine Tang on multiple counts for the shoreline violations. While the rock wall has since been removed, according to DLNR, sandbag “burritos” and other material have not been.

“OCCL staff acknowledges that the situation is challenging for the homeowners, but the department is also confronted by the lack of compliance and continued violations,” OCCL wrote in its submittal to the Land Board. “The subject landowners do not seem to have used the opportunity of temporary authorizations to develop long-term options, such as moving their homes away from the shoreline. Instead, it appears Mr. Tang has hardened the shoreline without authorization and appears to be attempting to pass the subject property and its associated challenges onto another party.”

DLNR says it appears Tang has used the property as a vacation rental since 2015.

In October the Star- Advertiser reported that the three-bedroom property, with ceiling-high windows that frame the ocean, was for sale for $899,000. Even though ocean waves were undermining the front of the house and the property was racking up violations, an ad for the property boasted of the ocean’s allure: “Imagine waking up every morning to an iconic Hawaiian Sunrise orchestrated by the sound of waves lapping the shore. What sounds like an unreal aspiration to many could be your dream beachfront home available at an unbelievable price!”

The price of the property was subsequently slashed to $595,000, and the ads clearly warned that the property had land use violations and was facing “ongoing challenges with shoreline erosion.” As of Wednesday, online ads for the property had been taken down.

Tang is the latest in a string of oceanfront property owners to face scrutiny as DLNR increasingly brings shoreline violation cases before the Land Board.

In September, DLNR began fining Tang’s neighbor who owned the nearby lot at 53-227 Kamehameha Highway $15,000 a day for an illegal rock wall. The owner, Zdenek “Don” Prchal, managed to sell the home to a buyer in Las Vegas as the fines grew. Prchal ended up paying $225,000 in fines that had accrued up until the day he closed on the deal. He told the Star-Advertiser at the time that he walked away with about $900,000 from the sale after subtracting fines and fees.

Prchal didn’t remove the rock wall before selling, leaving the new owner with the violation, which runs with the land.

OCCL Administrator Michael Cain said Wednesday that the state will use a $25,000 bond put up by Prchal as part of the enforcement case to hire a contractor to remove the rock wall. He said there is not a current timeline for removal.