Posted on June 28, 2021
WAIKIKI (HawaiiNewsNow) – It cost $3.5 million to get sand offshore to put on the beach between Kuhio Beach Park and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in a project completed last month.
But some are wondering if the ocean is already reclaiming a lot of that sand.
The state retrieved nearly 22,000 cubic yards of sand in shallow waters about a thousand feet offshore in order to double the width of the shoreline. But Kuhio Beach, already packed with tourists, almost looked the same as it did before the project.
Part of the reason is very high seasonal tides. The preliminary tide at Honolulu Harbor on Friday afternoon came close to 2.9 feet.
“It makes the beach look smaller, frankly, when you have these higher tides. It doesn’t mean that it is. It’s just a perception,” said Sam Lemmo, administrator of the DLNR Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, which managed the beach maintenance project.
The reality is that the sand is, indeed, going out. Experts said it’s meant to do that.
“The engineering design is to overfill it so that it loses some sand on purpose, and that sand goes offshore to complete what’s known as the equilibrium profile of the beach,” said Chip Fletcher of the UH School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.
The truth is that Waikiki is not a natural beach. It’s been engineered for more than a century.
“It’s something that has been created by humans as an asset,” said Fletcher.
It’s also a valuable amenity for Waikiki and Hawaii’s tourism industry.
“Over 40% of the hotel rooms in the state, big chunk of GDP, jobs, economic multipliers. We desperately need it, so we need to maintain that amenity,” said Lemmo.
The state also recently completed a new $1.5 million groin fronting the Royal Hawaiian Hotel to maintain the sand.
But other aging structures along the shoreline are falling apart due to erosion, including a pedestrian walkway behind the Outrigger Reef Hotel that has partially crumbled into the ocean.
Who gets to fix it becomes a tangle between private ownership and public location.
“It becomes a legal and sort of community discussion. It gets very convoluted,” said Fletcher.
“People don’t understand why there isn’t action being taken right away. It’s actually not clear who is responsible and should take the action and who’s going to pay for it,.”
The DLNR is looking at several measures to keep the sand on the beach in the future, including building what are known as T-head groins along the beach fronting the Sheraton Waikiki.
But Lemmo said maintaining the sandy beach will be an ongoing battle.
“Sea level rise, anomalous tides — it’s going to play havoc with us from now into ad infinitum, frankly.”