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August 17, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Sands of Time

Waikīkī is a ‘built’ beach.

Over the last 100-years it has been built primarily in two ways, (1) construction of walls and groins in the nearshore waters and (2) beach nourishment/replenishment (adding sand to the beach.)

Between 1913-1919, the majority of Waikīkī had seawalls; they were placed to protect roadways and new buildings. The beach was lost fronting Kūhiō and Queen’s Beach.

In 1927, the Territorial Legislature authorized Act 273 allowing the Board of Harbor Commissioners to rebuild the eroded beach at Waikīkī. By 1930, the Board of Harbor Commissioners reported on construction progress, which included 11 groins along a portion of the shoreline.

Then, they started adding sand to Waikīkī Beach.

Reports from the 1920s and 1930s reveal that sand was brought in to Waikīkī Beach, via ship and barge, from Manhattan Beach, California.

As the Manhattan Beach community was developing, it found that excess sand in the beach dunes and it was getting in the way of development there. At the same time, folks in Hawai‘i were in need for sand to cover the rock and coral beach at Waikīkī.

Kuhn Bros. Construction Co supplied the sand; they would haul the sand up from Manhattan Beach, load it onto railroad cars, have it transported to the harbor in San Pedro and shipped by barge or ship to Hawai‘i.

Later, Waikīkī’s sand was trucked from various points around Hawai‘i including O‘ahu’s North Shore – in particular, Waimea Bay Beach, a sand bar off the town of Kahuku and Pāpōhaku Beach on Molokai.

Reportedly, before sand mining operations removed over 200,000 tons of sand at Waimea Bay to fill beaches in Waikīkī and elsewhere, there was so much sand that if you would have tried to jump off Pōhaku Lele, Jump Rock, you would have jumped about six feet down into the sand below.

A formal application for a cooperative study regarding beach erosion in Waikīkī was made by the Board of Harbor Commissioners, Territory of Hawaii in 1948.

The intent of the Waikīkī Beach Erosion Control Project, which was the responsibility of the Army Corps of Engineers, was to increase beach land, improve access to beaches, and to prevent further erosion of beach sand.

The Waikīkī Beach Erosion Control Project was initiated in response. This project initiated what would turn out to be a 50-year series of attempts to restore Waikīkī Beach.

Since 1929, about 616,500 cubic yards of sand have been used to enlarge and replenish Waikīkī Beach between Fort DeRussy and Kūhiō Beach, but every year more erodes away. Little sand has been added since the 1970s, according to the DLNR.

When I was at DLNR, we initiated a demonstration project to move near shore sand back on to the beach.

In 2006, DLNR spent $500,000 to siphon 10,000 cubic yards of offshore sand – this was the largest replenishment effort of Waikīkī’s beaches in more than 30 years.

It worked; then, a larger project was implemented.

Early in 2012, a larger-scale replenishment project pumped sand from 2,000 feet off Waikīkī to fill in the shrinking beach.

The 2006 demonstration project and recent (2012) larger scale replenishment were really recycling projects, because the sand now settled offshore was brought in years ago to fill out the beach.

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  • Waikiki-fronting_old-Seaside_Hotel-seawall-1915
  • Waikiki with Diamond Head in the background-hawaii-gov-1934
  • Waikiki_and_Helumoa_Coconut-(from_Ewa_end_of_Helumoa)-1870
  • Waikiki_Beach_Houses_(UH_Manoa)-1924
  • Waikiki-Moana_Hotel-1920
  • Waikiki-Kalia_to_Moana-1920

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Hawaii, Waikiki, Sand Replenishment, Beach

July 5, 2014 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pāpōhaku

A chief from east Molokaʻi and a few of his people boarded canoes and set off around the island. They found themselves on the southwest coast of Molokaʻi.  They paddled up to some fishermen who had a large catch of opelu. Hungry, they began to eat.

As they were all eating with great satisfaction, another group of fishermen came by and cried: “Stop. Do not eat the opelu. This is the season of opelu kapu.” However, the visiting chief only had a kapu for eating turtle, so they continued eating.

The fishermen attacked the visiting chief and his men. Overpowered, they were brought before the kahuna. The visiting chief became very ill, and the only way to make things right was a human sacrifice to save the chief from death. One of his men offered himself as a sacrifice and the chief recovered.

The kahuna ordered a tree planted on the grave of the willing victim. The grave was on shore; when the tide was high, the waves would wash sand from the grave. Thus, in a very short time, the body would be exposed.

In respect and remembrance, the chief ordered his men to build a stone wall.  The chief himself put the last stone on the wall, saying as he did so, “I call this place Pāpōhaku, ‘Stone Wall.’” (DLNR)

Today, the sandy beach is seen as the primary feature here (it’s over 2-miles long and 300-feet wide, the largest on the island and one of the largest in the Islands.)  It lies between two headlands, Puʻu Koaʻe to the south and Puʻu o Kaiaka to the north.

The sand caught people’s attention.

First, folks looked to replenish eroding beaches by harvesting sand from one area and filled in at another (primarily at Waikīkī.)  Reports from the 1920s and 1930s reveal that sand was brought to Waikīkī Beach, via ship and barge, from Manhattan Beach, California.

As the Manhattan Beach community was developing, it found that excess sand in the beach dunes and it was getting in the way of development there.  At the same time, folks in Hawai‘i were in need for sand to cover the rock and coral beach at Waikīkī.

Later, Waikīkī’s sand was trucked from various points around Hawai‘i including O‘ahu’s North Shore – in particular, Waimea Bay Beach, a sand bar off the town of Kahuku and Pāpōhaku Beach on Moloka‘i.

Reportedly, before sand mining operations removed over 200,000 tons of sand at Waimea Bay to fill beaches in Waikīkī and elsewhere, there was so much sand that if you would have tried to jump off Pōhaku Lele, Jump Rock, you would have jumped about six feet down into the sand below.

Then came statehood, and the building boom of the following decades.

“Increased use of concrete by building contractors resulted in more output of sand required for blending with crushed basalt fines used in concrete aggregate.  A substantial gain was noted in the use of coral dune sands from the north shores of Oʻahu Island.  By yearend, Honolulu Construction & Draying Co Ltd (HC&D) was prepared to barge sand from Molokaʻi Island to supply some of Oahu’s requirements for the critical material.”  (Minerals Yearbook, 1959)

(HC&D was formed in 1908 by a quarry owner, three construction men and a retired sea captain. The base of the business was the draying (hauling) of construction materials by horse-drawn wagons. In late-1967, HC&D became a wholly owned subsidiary of American Pipe and Construction Co of Monterey Park, California (now it’s known as Ameron Inc.))

In the 1950s, a harbor was dredged and a wharf constructed at Hale O Lono by B&C (Brown and Clewitt) Trucking to ship out sand from Pāpōhaku (B&C also owned Seaside Inn and Pau Hana Inn.) A 1957 contract between Molokaʻi Ranch and HC&D allowed for sand to be removed from a 297-acre southern parcel of Pāpōhaku Beach.

“Sand and gravel was produced at 16 principal beach, dune, and stream deposits. The largest operation was the Molokaʻi sand facility of HC&D Ltd, Hawaiʻi’s major producer, consumer, and supplier of sand, cinder, and crushed stone.”  (Minerals Yearbook, 1964)

“Some of the land out on the western tip of the island is leased to Honolulu Construction and Draying Company Ltd, which mines something like 200,000-yards of sand a year from Pāpōhaku Beach for shipment to Oahu for use in making concrete.”  (Away From It All)

“All day long, every day, had trucks going back and forth from Pāpōhaku to Hale O Lono.”  From the early 1960s to 1975, this massive cache of sand was the site of the largest sand-mining operation in the state.

Some of the sand was drawn from below the high water mark, which was public land and required a government permit; at times the dredge bucket even drew the sand out of the ocean.

This was not legal and HC&D was caught and reportedly fined, resulting in a million-dollar settlement.  In lieu of payment of the fine, reportedly, Molokaʻi Ranch gave the land at Ala Mālama in Kaunakakai.

Even with the decades of sand removal, Pāpōhaku Beach remains one of the longest white sand beaches, and the Pāpōhaku Dune system associated with the beach is among the largest in Islands.

Pāpōhaku Dune (like other sand dunes) is the first and last line of defense against coastal erosion and episodic high waves for the existing structures located behind it.

Recently, the UH-Mānoa, Department of Urban and Regional Spring 2005 Graduate Practicum class prepared the Pāpōhaku Dunes Cultural and Natural Resource Preservation Plan.  DLNR is looking for ways to protect and enhance the Pāpōhaku Dune’s long-term sustainability.

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Filed Under: Economy, General, Place Names Tagged With: Hawaii, Sand Replenishment, Molokai Ranch, Ala Malama, Beach, Pahohaku, Kaunakakai, Molokai

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