Maui divers fear effects of beach restoration

Advocates say replenishment needed to slow pace of erosion
Harry Eagar, The Maui News 5 Jul 08;

SPRECKELSVILLE - Donald Okuda has been diving off Maui's north shore since he was 13 years old - 64 years ago. Sand replenishment on beaches worries him.

Even if the sand is clean, "when you dredge over it, it buries the life underneath the sand. You get a chain reaction."

Norm Ham, also a diver, says the disturbance of the crustaceans that are food for fish affects the fish. That affects the octopus that make their homes in the shallow reefs off Kahului.

"It damages the reef; it's not a natural thing," says Ham, who has been diving since the '60s.

The Board of Land and Natural Resources has approved a beach replenishment project for shoreline properties along Stable Road, which is being treated as an experiment in using offshore sand instead of sand from inland dunes.

Some of the regulars at Kanaha Beach Park, like Ham, Okuda and Paul Hanada, are hoping for a chance to express their doubts before the Maui Planning Commission. Hanada wrote to land board Chairwoman Laura Thielen: "Please ask the local people who use this area on what they think and how they feel about this issue before making any decision."

The board approved a small-scale beach nourishment permit for the project June 27 (the day Hanada e-mailed his letter), and the Maui Planning Department supports it. Planning Director Jeff Hunt said Monday that he had not received an application from the Stable Road property owners yet.

When he does, it will be evaluated to see whether it is an exempt project, requires a minor special management area permit or a major SMA permit.

A major permit requires a public hearing at the commission. Even if the project is exempt, the director can send it to the commission for review "if it impacts coastal resources."

Hanada and Ham say if there is a hearing, they will be there to testify.

Thorne Abbott, the planner who reviews coastal permits, says the department is "very supportive" of the novel approach of dredging sand from the bottom of the bay and pumping it ashore, for two reasons.

One is that "we are running out of sand" from dunes.

Second, if the replenishment works, it will improve lateral access and thus the public's ability to use the beach along Stable Road.

The sand in the bay is a public resource, he said, and should be used for public purposes. Stable Road is a private road.

Hanada referred to the Sugar Cove replenishment project a short distance to the east of Stable Road. The Sugar Cove residents consider their projects a big success.

Hanada does not. Neither does Brian Yoshikawa, also a diver.

"The tako grounds, it's wiped out. It hasn't come back," he said.

Earlier this summer, Yoshikawa said, he went out in his boat and "the reef I used to dive, I couldn't find it."

Sand washing off the replenished beach had covered the reef.

Darrell Tanaka, a spearfisherman and fishermen's advocate, said he is not opposed to beach replenishment. "There used to be a lot of sand there."

But he is worried about where the sand will be dredged from. A patch of sandy bottom off Speckelsville "is a very important crabbing ground," he said.

"It would be good if the state would hold a meeting; it would put the fishermen's minds at ease," he said. "I think open communication would be better."

The divers have six major fears over the effects of beach replenishment:

= Sand washing off the restored beach will fill in crevices in the reef that octopus, crabs and other marine animals use.

= Silt mixed in with the sand clogs the corals and smothers them. Suspended silt reduces the amount of sunlight in the water, slowing the growth of corals and weakening them.

= Disturbing the bottom upsets the balance of the ecosystem, contributing to blooms of one-celled dinoflagellates that can cause ciguatera poisoning in fish that eat the plankton. Humans, in turn, can get the paralytic poison from eating reef fish.

= The temporary Geotubes used to restrict the movement of sand are "seawalls in a sock," in the words of Yoshikawa. The county has a policy against hardening shorelines with seawalls, rock revetments and other "armor."

= The erosion that alarms beachfront property owners is the natural seasonal movement of sand. "It will come back," Okuda insists.

= If powerful winter swells wreck or move the Geotubes, Tanaka questioned who will be held responsible for preventing the tubes from damaging the reef.

Yoshikawa, president of Maui Sporting Goods, says state officials should listen to divers and fishermen like Okuda. "He's no scientist, but he has practical knowledge of the area that is just mind-boggling. He knows the shoreline from Waihee to Hookipa better than any scientist. His opinion carries a lot of weight."

Okuda said that the Department of Land and Natural Resources employs scientists, and "they should know more about the ocean than we do."

He says you have to look offshore to determine the effects of beach replenishment. "Look for the shells. We're losing all that stuff."

Advocates of replenishment counter that the method has worked successfully at Kuhio Beach in Waikiki. Robb Cole, the consultant guiding the application for the Stable Road landowners, says that when an exploration of ways to deal with erosion began, dredging sand "wasn't in the picture."

It remains much more expensive than trucking in sand, but he believes the sand on the seafloor is a much closer match to the sand on the beaches, without as much "fines" or silty, clay material.

While the local divers may question the rate of erosion based on their lifetimes, Cole cites a 1954 study estimating 800,000 cubic yards of sand were eroded away from the coastline between Paia and Kahului Harbor over the first half of the century, with the erosion rate increasing from 1940 to 1950 - about the time the military was installing revetments and other devices on the beach and in the ocean.

While the shoreline from Paia to Kahului does go through seasonal cycles of erosion and accretion, he said a 2002 analysis by the University of Hawaii sows the coastline is suffering a long-term losses.

The company that did the Kuhio Beach replenishment has been engaged to move the same amount of sand - 10,000 cubic yards for the Spreckelsville project. The DLNR has a master permit from the Department of Health (pending renewal) for projects up to that limit, which are considered small.

One question is how using Geotubes, which are fabric containers for sand, squares with the county policy about structures. The report to the BLNR by Dolan Eversole of the Office of Conservation & Coastal Lands says that after the end of a three-year evaluation period, the Geotubes could be made permanent.

Abbott says the tubes are "like a big arm" and are "not hardening" since they can be quickly dismantled.

Eversole's evaluation of Cole's proposal says the intention is not to completely halt the flow of sand along the shore but to slow it down. More sand would have to be dredged every few years. At the most optimistic, a slug of sand couldn't be expected to stay put longer than 10 years.

If successful, the method might be used at other rapidly receding beaches, as along Halama Street in Kihei.

The divers don't consider erosion a problem. Okuda says about the time his father started teaching him to dive at Hookipa, the Navy was putting in jetties at what was then called Naska (Naval Air Station Kahului) to create beaches where officers and enlisted men could swim.

The jetties "keep the sand back," Okuda said. The sand moves west till it hits a jetty. In the winter, when northwest swells try to push the sand back to the east, it gets caught.

"It's seasonal."

That's why, says Yoshikawa, there is seaweed all along the shore during the summer (or used to be) but not in the winter. Tako abundance also varies with the seasons.

Abbott says the experiment holds promise for better coordination of beach management than the state and the county have enjoyed up to now.

Along the shoreline from Kanaha Beach Park to Stable Road, the state Department of Transportation has posted no-trespassing signs. Under a new Ocean Resource Management Plan which brings together Eversole's office and county planners like Abbott, as well as other agencies that control shorelines, there is a chance to get better beach access.

For example, in this area, Abbott is hoping to get DOT not only to take down the kapu signs but to clear away tangled undergrowth that makes walking up from Camp One to the Stable Road area difficult.

Hunt said that since the project is novel, "it will be important to take a good look at this one."