Makena sea walls addition of sand in geotubes (which are designed to decay) would not pollute the water.

Sea wall: Soft ‘way to go’

Coconut fiber mats option for stabilizing Maui shoreline

By HARRY EAGAR, Staff Writer

reprinted courtesy Maui News 6/28/09

KIHEI - On Halama Street, a sea wall has been removed. Nothing too unusual there. Nature removes them from time to time. But this time, people did it, and - for what could be the first time in Hawaii - they didn't replace it with another sea wall.

It took a while for owner Vernon Altman and his consultants to come up with an alternative. Permitting was complicated and took about 18 months.

Thorne Abbott, the county planner who deals with shoreline projects, is enthusiastic. Planners frown on sea walls, but they also have to deal with fretful property owners who want to keep their buildings from falling into the ocean.

The problem is, sea walls have a nasty tendency not to solve problems but to move them down the coast.

That's what happened to Altman and his wife, Mary Lee, when they bought a house on the shore in Kihei. Its frontage was not armored, but the lot next door had had geotubes installed in 1996. A geotube is a rigid fabric sock filled with sand that acts much like a long rock.

Putting in a sea wall freezes the shore, preventing the natural cycle of sand accretion and deletion from working. Usually, alongshore currents keep moving the sand. With walls preventing the collection of new sand from upstream, the downstream beaches are starved and eroded.

Thus the Altmans' dilemma. Also, the house next door looked ripe for replacement, and Altman said he didn't want to see "a French chateau" go up on it. So they bought the house and lot and went looking for a way to stabilize the shoreline.

They were led to Joe Correa, an Oahu contractor who advocates using "soft" approaches to shoreline protection.

The geotubes were taken out and coconut fiber (coir) mats and tubes filled with sand replaced them. Soon, natural beach plants inserted in pukas in the coir should grow, send down roots and stabilize the dune.

The work alarmed James Gaffney, who walks the beach almost every day. It looked as if somebody was encroaching on the public beach. Which Altman was, but with permits and in an approved way.

After talking with Abbott, Gaffney's concerns were removed. So was Altman's sign.

When the work began, he put up a sign inviting passers-by to "Respect the beach." They didn't respect the sign, which was stolen within 12 hours.

But the rest of the program progressed as planned, after the Department of Health Clean Water Branch was persuaded that the addition of sand in the tubes (which are designed to decay) would not pollute the water.

The soft approach to shoreline protection might not be possible on some other beaches, because Halama Street is unusual in several ways.

For one, it is not eroding. According to Dolan Eversole of the University of Hawaii Sea Grant Program, who is a technical adviser to the Department of Land and Natural Resources, Halama has been accreting over time.

However, during winter storms it can retreat alarmingly, especially to owners new to the area who are not accustomed to the dynamic nature of open Hawaiian beaches.

Second, that part of Kihei has a state beach reserve makai of the private property. In places, the reserve has gotten narrower, in part, probably, because armoring elsewhere has changed the pattern of the shoreline structure. However, the existence of an empty ribbon of land had the effect of creating unusually deep setbacks for development, which helped prevent builders from flattening the dunes. Since the dunes survived, they were able to continue their function of surrendering sand during Kona storms and receiving it during long summer months of slow swells.

When the Altmans came to remove the armoring from their second property, at 1506 Halama, they lucked out, because the past winter had only a mild Kona season. No emergency situation developed.

As far as Eversole and Abbott can determine, nobody has ever removed a sea wall in Hawaii without replacing it with another sea wall.

There is some irony here. Altman says his father-in-law built sea walls in Florida in the 1960s and '70s. It was the usual practice then, and people didn't know better. Now they do.

When the Altmans moved to Kihei, they learned about beaches. The first thing they learned was that the next door sea wall was a bad neighbor. It "really wrecked" the Altmans' property.

Learning the history of Kihei, Altman concluded that four things had contributed to shoreline problems:

* Navy destruction of reefs during training exercises during World War II.

* The armoring of the shoreline at the county's Kalama Park.

* The installation of sandbags and sea walls in front of many private properties.

* Installation of a groin north of his property, which caught sand and kept it from replenishing beaches to the south.

When they decided to buy 1506 Halama to s ave it from becoming a French chateau, they knew that if they ever wanted to get building permits, they would have to remove the sea wall. And they wanted to rebuild, since the original house, built in 1952, was not in good shape.

Thus, what Altman calls "my little project."

In order to persuade various agencies to issue permits, "it required a lot of education. We needed to flatter them, but that's the way bureaucracies are," he said.

Since he got with the anti-sea wall program, he was able to get permits for a new house, which is not yet built.

No French chateau, it will be a Balinese-style tropical dwelling with several buildings linked together. The Altmans plan to live in it themselves. They haven't decided what to do with the house at 1498 Halama where they live now.

* Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.

reprinted courtesy Maui News 6/28/09

 

original link www. mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/520317.html

 

 

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