Residents in Hauula have been working for years to build Oahu’s first-ever resiliency hub, a storm-resistant center that could better protect their rural, isolated and vulnerable North Shore community after a hurricane, tsunami or other disaster.
Coastal officials in Hawaii are taking action against residents who lined their oceanfront properties with sandbags. A Star-Advertiser/ProPublica investigation last year found that lax enforcement of these protections was threatening beaches.
Everybody knows that seawalls cause beach loss, and Hawaii law forbids building them. But Honolulu County officials have granted exemptions to 46 homeowners over the past two decades even as a quarter of Oahu’s beaches have disappeared.
