Editor’s note: This is the first of two parts of a story about a dispute over a route of a proposed coastal pathway in Wailua. Tomorrow: some point-by-point pros and cons. WAILUA — Mayor Bryan J. Baptiste and county officials
Editor’s note: This is the first of two parts of a story about a dispute over a route of a proposed coastal pathway in Wailua. Tomorrow: some point-by-point pros and cons.
WAILUA — Mayor Bryan J. Baptiste and county officials smile, and owners of luxury-resort-condominium units in Wailua frown, when each talk about the building of a five-foot-wide walking path on the coastline area fronting the units.
County officials envision the project as pivotal way to protect coastal public access for generations to come, a key goal of Baptiste’s.
William K. Sweeney, an attorney and owner of a unit at Kapaa Sands, and up to 150 other owners at four beach-front-condominium complexes, assert the project will greatly degrade the environment, create erosion, ruin habitats for the federally-protected Hawaiian monk seals and the Hawaiian green sea turtles, and drive down property values of units.
The chasm between the two camps has come to a head in a detailed response Sweeney and the other condominium owners have filed with the county.
The document is in response to a draft environmental assessment that sites no significant adverse impact from the project, an assessment that allows county officials to move forward with the plan. A final environmental assessment, held up by the controversy over the pathway, is pending.
But county leaders’ deletion of the pathway in the environmental study is a must, Sweeney insisted in an interview with The Garden Island.
“This project has been such a thorn in everybody’s side,” Sweeney said.
And if the project isn’t eliminated, the draft environmental impact study must be withdrawn, and Kaua‘i County leaders must prepare an environmental impact study or a cultural environmental impact statement, Sweeney said.
Either study will show the folly in building the project, Sweeney predicted.
As a last resort, Sweeney said he and other condominium owners will file a lawsuit to stop the project.
Baptiste and Tim Bynum, a former community-response specialist with Kaua‘i County who has help oversee the development of the project, say they aren’t necessarily looking for a fight.
They said they only want to build a project on county-owned property that will benefit Kauaians for years to come.
“It is public property, and the public has a right to access that public property,” Baptiste said.
“They are our neighbors,” Bynum said. “We are trying to work toward a consensus.”
If no agreement can be reached, county leaders will exercise condemnation powers to buy land the Lae Nani condominium owners own by the Kukui Heiau to make the project a reality, said Dough Haigh, the buildings super-intendent for the Kaua‘i County Department of Public Works.
“Lae nani” means “beautiful point” in Hawaiian.
The portion of the proposed coastal pathway in dispute is between the northern end of Wailua Beach and the Coconut Marketplace resort shopping center.
The proposed project is part of the third phase of a proposed six-phase coastal bicycle and pedestrian pathway the Baptiste administration has proposed to run from Ahukini to Anahola.
When completed, the 16-plus-mile project will enhance the recreational value of the entire seashore of East Kaua‘i, and could be the only project of its kind in the state, proponents say.
County officials have said the entire project serves as a tool to protect the public’s right to coastal areas on Kaua‘i.
Reaching that goal is essential and vital, county leaders say, as new land-owners have shut down public access to properties in some areas of the mountains and along the coastline, citing the need for privacy, and trespassing and liability issues and concerns.
The first phase of the bicycle/pedestrian project, 2.5 miles at Lydgate Park, has been completed. Work on another, 4.3-mile stretch, from Lihi Park (near Pono Kai Resort at the Waika‘ea Canal in Kapa‘a) to Kealia, is to start this year.
The third phase, which involves the proposed, disputed walkway, covers about 2 miles. It would run from Lydgate Park to Lihi Park.
The draft environmental assessment calls for development of a bicycle and pedestrian pathway to run along Papaloa Road instead of along the beach, an option supported by owners of the Wailua Bay, Lae Nani, Lanikai, Kapaa Sands and Hale Awapuhi resort condominiums, said Sweeney.
Part of this third phase, as outlined in the draft environmental assessment, called for the development of a 10-to-12-foot-wide bicycle and pedestrian pathway to be built between the condominiums and the ocean.
That didn’t go over well with the condominium owners, Bynum said. So, in the spirit of compromise, and because of concerns not to have too much foot traffic by the heiau, Baptiste proposed a five-foot-wide pathway, Bynum said.
Sweeney said that proposal is not part of the current environmental study, and that he and other condominium owners are surprised that no one from the county provided any official notice of the revised plan.
“The details haven’t been presented to us, and the five-foot-wide footpath is not part of any environmental study I am aware of,” Sweeney said.
The condominium owners were made aware of the new proposal through presentations, said Haigh.
“We went before them last September, and we talked about the compromise solution. And they wanted more information on where it would be.”
Bynum said the proposed five-foot pathway will be detailed in the final environmental assessment.
Under the plan, the walkway would start at the northern end of Wailua Bay, by the old Seashell Restaurant on Kuhio Highway, and move northward to the Kukui Heiau.
The pathway would pivot mauka onto a public right-of-way that heads mauka to Papaloa Road.
An obstructed, panoramic view of the ocean can be had from the beach fronting the condominium units.
In a cove-like setting below the units, residents and visitors can relax on the beach, taking in the sun and cooling tradewinds, at an area near Alakukui Point.
At the northern end of the cove by the heiau, children can play and swim with adults in a rock-enclosed swimming area.
