Maui Beach Coastal Erosion Takes Down Sidewalk, Trees

A portion of the sidewalk and the trees on it are falling into the ocean at Kaanapali Beach, a well-known beach in Maui, after a very high tide on Friday.

Residents claimed that attention is long overdue to the alarming situation of coastal erosion.

Tiare Lawrence, a Maui resident, captured the issue's scope in drone footage.

Lawrence claimed that she is afraid of seeing more of these ineffective band-aid fixes.

A post shared by instagram

This erosion is the worst he has ever seen, according to interim dean Chip Fletcher from the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii.

Fletcher said that he has never witnessed erosion progress to the point where it undermined and severed that sidewalk.

Sandbags?

Some of the sandbags along the shoreline, according to the professor, date from a comparable erosion event that occurred about 20 years ago.

In response, thousands of sandbags were placed by neighborhood hotels. Since then, they have been covered in sand due to the recent erosion.

Fletcher said the worsening erosion is nature's signal that the community needs to reduce its reliance on developed assets because the rise in sea level seems to make the shoreline move to where the sidewalks and buildings are.

He added that it is right now that people can participate in managed retreats at the lowest cost and with the least amount of difficulty.

Finding that out is a challenge, but according to Fletcher, they are not the only community across the globe with this problem. Rather, every coastal community does, he added.

Lawrence and other locals support Fletcher's call for a retreat.

Lawrence said that the public cannot continue to put off fixing something that needed to be fixed 40 years ago.

She continued by saying that she found it to be very discouraging and that she wants her kids to be able to appreciate the beaches where she spent her childhood.

A restoration project for Kaanapali Beach is being proposed by Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) to address the problem, but Fletcher said it's only a short-term fix that would give the state up to ten years, Hawaii News Now reported.

Coastal Erosion in the US

Soils, rocks, and sands along the coast are worn down or carried away by the process of coastal erosion, which is brought on by local sea level rise, powerful wave action, as well as coastal flooding.

All coastlines are impacted by storms and many other natural occurrences that result in erosion; however, the most detrimental conditions are those that result from the interaction of storm surge happening at high tide with significant effects from strong waves.

With the increase in sea level, the problem's scope and severity are getting worse, but they vary across the nation, making it impossible to find a fix that works for everyone.

According to US Climate Resilience Toolkit data, coastal erosion causes about $500 million in coastal property losses annually in the US, including the destruction of buildings and loss of land.

The federal government invests an average of $150 million annually in beach nourishment as well as other shoreline erosion countermeasures to lessen coastal erosion.