At least not while Kusaka’s mayor, official vows Citing high cost, Kaua’i County has shelved a plan to build a $5 million revetment on beach areas to prevent erosion along parts of Wailua Golf Course. The project may be revived
At least not while Kusaka’s mayor, official vows
Citing high cost, Kaua’i County has shelved a plan to build a $5 million revetment on beach areas to prevent erosion along parts of Wailua Golf Course.
The project may be revived by future mayors, but it won’t be built in Mayor Maryanne Kusaka’s final two years in office, said Wally Resentes Sr., Kusaka’s administrative assistant.
“We don’t have the money, we are not going to ask for the money. We don’t want to hear about it,” Resentes said.
The county considered the wall and other projects as a way to help return the county-operated course to its glory days in the 1980s, when it was rated among the best municipal golf courses in the nation. With the installation of a new irrigation system and other improvements at a cost of more than $2 million, county officials hope the facility will achieve such prominence again.
While seasonal ocean currents have taken sand away from the beach fronting part of the course, the erosion poses no immediate threat to the course, according to some.
Although the county has no plans to pursue the revetment project now, the proposal remains alive, technically, said Samuel J. Lemmo, chief planner with the planning office of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.
According to official documents, the county has developed a draft environmental assessment and anticipates a finding that the proposed project will not adversely impact the environment.
If the county finalizes the environmental study and declares the project will not have any impact, the proposal can be sent to DLNR and the Army Corps of Engineers for approval, Lemmo said.
A critic of the proposed seawall, Kaua’i attorney Kurt Bosshard, said the current shoreline survey results show the golf course is “intruding onto the beach.”
The county and the engineering firm of Oceanit Laboratories of O’ahu, which looked at various erosion control options, “has represented that 40 feet of the golf course has been lost to erosion,” Bosshard said. “The results of the state surveyor proved that there has been no erosion to the golf course. There is no need for the revetment whatsoever.”
Resentes said the Public Works Department is pursuing options — including a revetment – that Oceanit outlined in a study.
“Public Works is pursuing approval of options that would be available to any county council or mayor,” Resentes said.
Oceanit suggested these options:
– No action.
– Beach nourishment, construction of offshore breakwaters.
– And a revetment to cope with hurricane-created waves.
But Oceanit said a revetment to withstand hurricane waves could reach a height of 12 feet, which “would be impractical, too costly and aesthetically displeasing.”
In place of the revetment, the county has opted for the revegetation project at a cost of a little more than $180,000. But that project may be halted because of the dispute between DNLR and the county over the certification of the shoreline.
Last November, the state rejected the shoreline certification the county submitted, claiming that it was different from boundaries in an executive order allowing the county to use land around the beach for the golf course.
Ken Kitabayashi, who heads the engineering division for the Public Works Department, said a discrepancy existed between the two surveys. But he said a road existed seaward of the shoreline area identified in the executive order, suggesting the boundary can change, lending validity to the current shoreline certification readings.
Goodfellow Brothers, which has the contract to install a new irrigation system and to make improvements at the golf course at a cost of more than $2 million, hired Kaua’i Nursery and Landscaping for the revegetation project.
Bosshard said the county has failed to meet the deadline for the work and must obtain a DNLR permit for the work.
Due to the threat of erosion, the DNLR, in October 1998, gave the county emergency authorization for the revegetation project, resulting in the waiver of permit requirements, Bosshard said. Because authorization for the work expired in April 1999, DNLR extended it until December 2000.
Kitabayashi said the county plans to proceed with the project and that the work is anticipated to be completed by the summer.
“They have authorized us to revegetate, so I really don’t know why we can’t,” he said.
Staff writer Lester Chang can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) and mailto:lchang@pulitzer.net
