Seawalls: Saviors or Scourges
By: Amiti Maloy, UHM MOP Student

West Virginia is the ‘Mountain State’, Florida the ‘Sunshine State’, and Hawaiʻi is known as the ‘Aloha State’. These official nicknames are relatively self-descriptive. Entering West Virginia you expect to see mountains and, in Florida, sunny days. So what does one envision for ‘aloha’? Aloha is a Hawaiian term for regard and caring with no obligation for equal exchange such that a collective existence is possible between people with mutual value and importance. While this representation is of deep importance to Hawaiians, it is an additive benefit to guests but not the external characteristic that people envision.

Hawaii’s secondary nickname, “Paradise of the Pacific,” gives a more descriptive picture of Hawaiʻi with its pristine, sandy beaches, waves, magical sunsets, hula dancers, and other uniquely Hawaiian imagery. The water, the waves, the public beaches- a magical combination that costs nothing…or does it? According to a collaboration between Ash Ngu of ProPublica and Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Sophie Cooke, over the last 100 years the Hawaiian islands of Kauai, Maui, and Oahu have seen drastic levels of beach erosion, with some places experiencing reductions of up to a 25%.

Climate change related sea level rise is predicted to eliminate nearly 40% of Hawaii’s beaches by 2050. Less than 10 inches of sea level rise is sufficient to cause emergency measure requests to increase, specifically by beachfront property owners who have a history of manipulating beaches, which are all public, for their personal gain. In this case, the ‘emergency measure requests’ typically refer to attempts by beach property owners to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the land they have purchased.

Ngu and Cooke attribute one of the main causes of current beach loss to the influx of approved shoreline exemptions specifically for seawalls. Beachfront property owners built seawalls to protect their land and inadvertently hastened the kind of erosion they were trying to avoid. This problem became apparent almost four decades ago in the 1980s, when seawall property protections were popularized only to exacerbate erosion effects. The 1999 “no tolerance” policy appears to be less forceful than realized, as applications to erect new seawalls or repair/reconstruct more dilapidated ones continue to be accepted.

Seawalls and the beach erosion they cause have impacts beyond the loss of shoreline recreation. There is great potential for large economic impacts in the form of losing tourism, which would harm the economy of the Hawaiian Islands at large. It is important not to lose sight of the fact that damage of seawall beach erosion harms natural communities as well. While we tend to look at beaches as sandy playgrounds for people, we are not alone enjoying these beaches. Seawalls result in less beach for important marine species like the Hawaiian monk seal who rely on those sands as a place to birth, bask, and rest. Some turtle species also utilize beach space for basking and laying eggs.

Beautiful beaches are disappearing across Hawaiʻi at a staggering rate. As people create their own land grabs they are both contributing to the beach breakdown and reducing one of the main enticements that draws visitors to Hawaiʻi, all the while threatening marine life. We are individuals but also members of a human and natural community. We would all do well to remember that balance. Aloha means that we care for our neighbors and the land, not just for ourselves.