WAILUA — The state is trying to rebuild Wailua Beach.
It’s a process that’ll include new technology that will trap sand and renourish the eroded beach that threatens Kuhio Highway, according to the state Department of Transportation.
It’s called a Sandsaver, and is made of polyethylene plastic and concrete. The sloped device has holes in the unit which allow waves to flow through. The holes have small channels that trap the sand on either side of the device.
“Essentially, (the technology) promotes the restoration of the beach through the natural wave action of varying sand on the beach and traps the sand on both the mauka and makai side of the device, and proposes to build the beach back,” state DOT Kaua‘i District Engineer Larry Dill said last week at a community meeting to discuss the latest Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) priorities.
Erosion of Wailua Beach, which is coming up to the right-of-way owned by the state, has already undercut portions of the county’s bike path. Currently, sandbags have been placed along the beach to protect the structure that abuts the highway.
The Sandsaver was first used in Keyna in 2020, according to manufacturer Granger Plastics Company, and within four days the system was able to accumulate 1,500 cubic yards of sand in and around the system.
Ed Sniffen, state DOT deputy director of the Highways Division, said this beach-renourishment is meant to last long-term, as opposed to dredging, which hasn’t proven to last. A soft revetment of boulders along the slope with mixed concrete is an idea the state is attempting to mitigate the problem without fully hardening the environment.
The project, using emergency-relief Federal Highway Administration money given for recovery from the March 2021 storms, is estimated to cost $1.4 million for the 1,700-foot area, Sniffen said.
The project will also utilize the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa’s College of Engineering, which will monitor the project on land and at sea.
Wailua Beach is the pilot site for the project, but the state has already identified Waikoko on the North Shore and Makaha Beach on O‘ahu as other potential pilot locations.
As the department continues the permitting and environmental process, residents will get more information, Sniffen said. But if everything keeps moving along, this project could start by the end of this year.
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Sabrina Bodon, public safety and government reporter, can be reached at 245-0441 or sbodon@thegardenisland.com.
If the State or County hadn’t moved tons of sand from the beach to try to fortify the bridge after the flood which allowed the next flood to take all of the sand they moved out to sea, this never would have happened…Blame the engineers of that catastrophe….
Who wouldn’t want to shore up Wailua Beach and keep the ocean back from the highway and bike path (multiuse path)? But plastic and cement? How natural does that sound? How long would it last till the ocean rises beyond that irrational fix leaving plastic/cement junk on the sea bed. These measures are no match for a rising sea and not good for life forms including coral. The road needs to be rerouted up behind, or even through the Coco Palms ruins. Rerouting the road should have been the option instead of putting in the 2nd lane at that location. We are wasting money. We are wasting time.
When will we wake up to the reality that sea level rise will render much of our coast unusable? We need to move our roads and bridges away from the coast now.
There was an early 70s (1971?) “Master Plan” taking hours and hours of community involvement and time to come up with (and largely ignored) planning document for decision-making. it proposed a second bridge further up-river on the Wailua, and a re-routing of the highway back into the coconut grove, well behind the Coco Palms development. That would have left a large area near the ocean, potentially accessed from Kapaa or Lihue side, creating a potential large beach-front park for use by Coco Palms tourists and residences alike. Had that plan been followed from 50 years ago, we’d be in much better shape now. But why would Master Plans actually influence what actually happens?
Since I have sat in the traffic jam around there for many hours and thought about solutions the present plan seem short-sighted. It is past time to move the highway, with more lanes, further up-river