Climate change is unquestionably reshaping island life — from comparatively pronounced seasonal changes and increasingly powerful storms, to existential threats including wildfires and sea level rise. On the latter, government leaders after decades of palliative action are turning focus toward tackling rapid coastal erosion, an insidious danger now causing chunks of inhabited land to fall into the sea. Among a clutch of bills signed into law Monday by Gov.
Josh Green was House Bill 2248, which earmarks $1 million to develop a North Shore Beach Management Plan targeting an area from Sunset Point to Sharks Cove. Answers can’t come soon enough for the vulnerable stretch of shoreline, where Green said “houses are falling into the ocean.” Funds will be allotted to the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program, now tasked with the creation of a management plan that considers “innovative means” to address erosion on both private and public property, as well as preservation of the area’s natural beauty.
HB 2248 calls for diverse community input, something that’s in no short supply on the North Shore, where certain residents have flouted protection laws and hardened shorelines with sandbags, concrete, boulders and more invasive artificial structures in a desperate bid to save their oceanfront properties from being reclaimed by the sea. In January, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) meted out two nearly $1 million fines against a pair of North Sho.
