RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM The state Department of Land and Natural Resources spent $475,000 to pull sand from offshore to replenish Waikiki's Kuhio Beach over the past month. "The beach is back," said department head Peter Young about the area, shown here Tuesday.

DLNR wants $1M to study beach

Sand replenishment at Kuhio is just the start of saving Waikiki's shore, officials claim

The recent widening of Kuhio Beach is "just a Band-Aid" compared with the importance of preserving the shoreline of the entire stretch of Waikiki beaches, coastal geologists said yesterday.

In an effort to find a more permanent solution to the perennial problem of the eroding sand on Hawaii's most famous beach, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources is asking the Legislature for $1 million to study beach maintenance from the Ala Wai Harbor to Sans Souci Beach in the shadow of Diamond Head.

How many years the new sand will stay on Kuhio Beach will depend on weather and wave action. But it could be as little as a few years, said Dolan Eversole, the coastal geologist who oversaw the project for the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources spent $475,000 to pull sand from offshore and replace it on Kuhio Beach during the past month. The project was hailed yesterday by department Director Peter Young as "within budget and within the time frame. The beach is back."

Though officials are pleased with the success of the Kuhio sand-pumping venture and its cost, putting sand back on the beach is not the only thing that is needed, Eversole said.

If people had not altered Waikiki's coastline over the years, it would look much different today. "The waterline would be in the lobbies of hotels, there would be thin margins of sand on the coast and wetlands would extend to the H-1 freeway," said Charles "Chip" Fletcher, a University of Hawaii coastal geologist.

But people -- visitors, tourism and government officials and Hawaii residents -- want Waikiki beaches to have some sand on them.

Beach managers also need to consider whether the hodgepodge of groins, sea walls, breakwaters and other elements installed over the years should be left alone or possibly redone with one master plan for the Waikiki beaches, Eversole said.

Although the current shoreline of Waikiki is not natural, "it has settled into some kind of equilibrium," Fletcher said. But it is an equilibrium that is eroding almost everywhere.

"You can't continue to improve on a spot-by-spot basis," Fletcher said.

Rick Egged, executive director of the Waikiki Improvement Association, said the beach in some portions of Waikiki -- fronting the Sheraton-Waikiki and between Queen's and Sans Souci beaches -- is getting perilously slim.

Egged lobbied the Legislature in years past to fund the Kuhio project, and he will be back pitching the larger plan, he said.

Preliminary Waikiki beach plans offered by consultants in recent years suggested replacing current breakwaters and groins with "T-shaped groins" or a scalloped beach. Those will be among the options any new study will review, Eversole said.

Those plans prompted opposition from surfers in 2000, who feared the groins could disrupt existing surf spots.

Consultants who help plan the renovation of Waikiki's beaches should "have a huge wealth of experience in complex beach processes, someone who has done tons of this," Fletcher said.