Hawaii Public Radio: The Conversation
December 20, 2018
By Catherine Cruz & Bill Dorman
CREDIT DEPARTMENT OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES
Transcribed with quotes emphasized by the Kaimana Beach Coalition.
Catherine Cruz: This is The Conversation on Hawaii Public Radio. I’m Catherine Cruz. You’re in for a treat today as we listen back to some of Hawaii’s history. Specifically we’re looking at Waikiki, its past, present, and future. Our guests include Dolan Eversole, a coastal geologist with the University of Hawaii’s Sea Grant college. He’s here to talk about managing our coastal resources as we face rising warming waters. And Andrew Rossiter, he’s been the Director of the Waikiki Aquarium since 2004 following long stints in Japan, Canada, and Africa. Welcome to you both.
Excerpt beginning at 21:50
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CC: And Andrew, you were talking about the master plan for your facility, but right next to it is the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium, and there we’re in the middle of discussing what it’s future is going to be like and we’ve got this draft EIS that’s out and I understand that part of the preferred alternative calls for shoring up the walls which includes I believe putting in pilings. So how are you looking at that?
Andrew Rossiter: I actually only heard about this yesterday. I’d be very, very cautious about doing pilings next to the aquarium because the vibrations that come from pilings will be transmitted through the ground and into the exhibits at the aquarium and fish are very, very sensitive to vibration, much much more so than humans.
CC: And as far as the tanks, I mean are they, were they built to withstand –
AR: The tanks [would] probably be structurally sound, but it’s the fish and the animals living inside them that I’d be most concerned about.
CC: OK. And you plan to weigh in on that?
AR: Yeah, now that I know about it, I will, yep.
CC: And I think that’s a concern, I think people just need to know what’s planned for that area, whether you’re talking about sea level rise, or warming temperatures in the ocean, what do we have planned and how do we deal with it?
Bill Dorman: And that idea, also Dolan that you were talking about earlier, about lessons learned from elsewhere, were not in isolation in terms of what is going on and that adaptability. What is to be learned in that area?
Dolan Eversole: Yeah, I guess I’m a glass half full kind of guy, similar to Andrew’s point about not looking at sea level rise as a challenge as much as an opportunity. It certainly has its challenges and we’ve done a lot of mapping on that. But there are [a] number of places around the world that have been dealing with sea level rise far longer than we have. Even places like Miami are well ahead of us in having to deal with what we call chronic erosion and nuisance flooding. So they’re having to deal with things like every high tide the streets flood, and it’s not the end of the world – they’re finding ways to deal with it. As far as a long term resilient community there are some challenges there of course. But they’re finding way to deal with it in the short term with pumping out systems and raising the elevation of streets.
There are some active discussions going on about how that would look in a place like Waikiki or Honolulu for that matter. Where we start this is probably in our most critical, high density areas like Waikiki and Kakaako where there’s tremendous amount of infrastructure already. As I said earlier, I’m more of an optimistic kind of guy. Looking at something like the rail coming in maybe is our opportunity to think more strategically about where subsurface utilities might go as that thing is built. Those are some of the opportunities that I see. One of the challenges that I see with respect to [the] ground water table coming right up right through the surface of the ground is we have our wastewater systems, storm drains, that are typically gravity fed, so they’re on a very low slope towards a forced main that pumps it toward a wastewater treatment facility. Well as sea level rises, those gravity-fed systems aren’t gonna work any more. So that’s probably one of the low-hanging fruit[s], is starting to think more carefully about our wastewater systems in high-density areas to start.
Those communities that are a little higher elevation as you get in that 6 to 8 to 10 feet above sea level, you’re probably OK for at least 100 years or so. But those that are really low elevation along the coast, think Kakaako, Waikiki, pretty much all of our urban corridor in Honolulu, they’re gonna be faced with starting to wrestle with these. I wish I had more specific examples that I could give you, that here’s a place that we’re looking carefully at. There is a lot of research going on right now, trying to look at what other communities are doing, and there’s a lot of attention being paid to that. So we’re certainly not ignoring it and trying to learn from others as things develop.
Excerpt beginning at 27:38
CC: We are talking about Waikiki with Andrew Rossiter and Dolan Eversole and Bill Dorman, [HPR’s] News Director. And we were discussing the Waikiki Natatorium, since that project is in the throes of, what do we do, do we rebuild it, do we tear down the arch and rebuild it somewhere else and build a new beach. That’s [an] important point to talk about because it’s right next to your area, Andrew, and there’s concern apparently about silt and the turbidity, and the effect of some of that kicking up and affecting not only the beach on the other side but also your area.
AR: Yeah. The Natatorium has been essentially building up sediment over the past 50 so years. Some of the reports that I’ve read say it’s between 5 and 8 feet deep. The bottom layers of that [have] got no oxygen, it’s anoxic, it’s black, it’s probably got lots of toxins in it. And our concern is that if one of the walls were to collapse, or if they did the renovation improperly, the sea would be allowed to access the natatorium directly, and it would wash all of that sediment in a big plume in one direction, because the current there doesn’t actually come from off shore to one shore, it actually comes along the shore. And it goes from the natatorium towards Waikiki. So essentially if the walls were to collapse or there was an issue the sediment would all be washed in a big plume from the natatorium right down to Waikiki, and on its way it would go over the marine protected area and probably kill everything there.
CC: I mean that would be catastrophic.
AR: Oh, it would be absolutely catastrophic, yeah. And not only to the wildlife, but also to the tourist industry in Waikiki.
CC: And Dolan, what about issues relating to the sea level rise if you’re got a project there on the beach?
DE: Yeah, that’s a good question. A multimillion dollar question at that. I did look at the EIS for the natatorium and I’m pleased to say that they do at least acknowledge sea level rise in the environmental assessment. They don’t say specifically what they’re gonna do to accommodate sea level but they do reference the DLNR study that I mentioned earlier with respect to what’s been already documented for predictions for sea level rise, and they say that they will take provisions to accommodate up to 3.2 feet of sea level, which is what the state is recommending now for, at least conceptually, for new projects is to consider up to 3.2 feet of sea level. What that looks like in the final design is yet to be determined, but they’re at least acknowledging sea level in the report. It may be a simple matter of just raising the elevation of the perimeter walls that are proposed 2-3 feet to accommodate that, but it also gets to this question of, well how long is [the] new restored natatorium intended to be there? If it’s a legacy piece of infrastructure that 100 years or more, that’s going to be a real challenge to keep it in place, at least how it looks now. If it’s a 40 to 50 year type – most coastal infrastructure is designed to last about 50 years, seawalls and groins and things like that – 50 years in a general engineering lifetime. So 50 years we might be looking at about 3 to 4 feet of sea level rise, which is probably something that we could accommodate. Beyond that, it’s really hard to say what that area might look like.
CC: So engineering’s gonna be key.
AR: Yeah, I got firsthand experience of concrete and rebar structures built right next to the ocean. The aquarium is now 61-62 years old, so past the 50 year cutoff point, and it’s really shown its age.
DE: Yeah, and that’s common throughout Waikiki. We see a lot of the seawalls and structures that were built 50 to 80 years ago are really starting to deteriorate now at a more accelerated pace. Partly because they’re hitting that age, and partly because the water – the ocean levels have been unusually high the last several years. You mentioned the splash earlier, we’re seeing that throughout Waikiki, that things – the water level is unusually high, and we’ve all heard this term “king tides” now. That is a phenomena that is not a new phenomena, we just coined a new term for it – but it [has] been unusually on what I would call a temporary basis. So it’s – last, two summers ago it was almost a foot higher than it should have been, the water levels in Honolulu. That is going back down to near normal, but sea level is going to catch back up. And it’s going to look like that all the time in about 20-30 years.
Excerpt beginning at 43:22
CC: Andrew, doesn’t the city have some kind of plan to also deal with an eroding – I don’t know if it was some kind of landscaping area abutting your aquarium?
AR: I don’t know what they’ve got planned over there, I just could ask Dolan. Are there any plans for artificial reefs to help buffer the effect of wave action?
DE: There aren’t any plans yet but there’s been some discussion about tying the beach restoration efforts to conservation efforts for the reef as well.
AR: I would jump in with that and say it would be a great opportunity to also reintroduce corals to some areas and see if they propagate there, and then if that succeeded the fish would colonize naturally and you’d get back up to something approaching what it used to be.
DE: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up, this came up in a meeting recently with DLNR. These are challenging projects to try to kick off, but if we’re talking about a major engineering project, building new structures and things like that, typically what’s required from the Army Corps of Engineers is some form of what they call compensatory mitigation, so if you put rocks on even an algal reef, so a lot of the near shore reef in Waikiki is not a really pristine reef, is more of coralline algae, but it is a live reef, and if you have no other option than put rocks on it, you need to compensate through some form, and we’re thinking maybe a form of mitigation might be to do a reef restoration project nearby to mitigate the potential impact [to the] reef.
CC: We do have a call on the line, Rick [Bernstein] from Honolulu, do you have a question?
Rick Bernstein: Hi, yes. I have been studying the Environmental Impact Statement, and as you know there are two plans in play. One is the new beach plan, the other is the perimeter deck plan. Regarding that silt that Dr. Rossiter talked about earlier, that silt according to [the] environment impact statement study by sea engineering this year says that the silt will not only go in the other direction, it will also go into Kaimana Beach depending on which way the littoral drift is going that particular day. And upon occasion the beach will be closed, says this report. The environmental impact statement for the beach plan mitigates the silt by grading it, placing an environmental cover over it, covering that with gravel and then covering that with two feet of sand. The new perimeter deck plan has no budget nor any plan whatsoever for mitigating this silt, which will flow freely through grated walls into the ocean, so I think that’s really important and I’d like to hear Dr. Rossiter and Dolan’s ideas about that. Thank you.
CC: Who wants to take that?
DE: I guess I’ll take a stab at that. Thank you for the call, Rick. I think – the mitigation of the silt material that we’ve described as being several feet thick in the natatorium basin now is problematic. I think that is something that needs to be addressed. Allowing it to just freely flush out into the open ocean in the nearshore environment is not really – I don’t see how that’s not gonna have a big negative impact. It’s not the end of the world, there are ways to mitigate it as Rick mentioned for the beach design. There’s another analogy here with the Hilton Lagoon, the Duke Kahanamoku Lagoon. When they restored that, they simply put a geo – they didn’t remove it, they put a geotextile layer down and then they put sand on top of that. So there are ways you can mitigate it without it costing, you know, tens of millions of dollars. But I think there needs to be some more thought put into how we mitigate this fine silt, ’cause it is going to be a problem. If you have too much fine silt it can obviously smother the reef and cause all kinds of impacts to the near shore.
CC: So much for your reef restoration if there’s gonna be a major silt problem. Andrew?
AR: I just agree with everything Dolan has just said. Silt is and always will be a big problem unless it’s removed. Even if it’s underneath the natatorium there will be seepage of nitrates, nitrites, into the natatorium water itself, which will probably precipitate large algae blooms and you’ll have a natatorium that is essentially bright green and cloudy in color.
(Long silent pause)
CC: Interesting to think about projects that are on the drawing board right now and what we need to do and how to mitigate all these issues relating to protecting Waikiki.
BD: And the impacts really of not only the foreseen, but the unforeseen, dealing with issues of weather and change and storms, they may have impacts that we are not anticipating and – Andrew is seen nodding your head.
AR: Yeah, exactly. I think in projects like this it’s very important to get as many different perspectives as possible, because if you’re just a pure engineer, you’re looking at the physical structure. If you’re a biologist, you’re looking at something else. If you’re a geologist you’re looking at the substructure. But to get all these different perspectives together then you’ll get an overarching view of what to do right, what could go wrong, and how to resolve the issues.
BD: And is there a forum that you gentlemen are involved in that touches on that, or that is again looking to that glass half full to the way forward, is there something that –
DE: With respect to the natatorium, I’m not aware of any particular working group or anything like that, at least I’m not part of it. There probably is something internal to the city where they’ve had a team of people looking at it beyond just production of the EIS. But in Waikiki as part of this Waikiki beach district actually ends at the Kapahulu groin. But if you think of Kapahulu groin to the Ala Wai we have formed a working committee, that’s the Waikiki Beach Community Advisory Committee, and it’s largely composed of beach boys, lifeguards, operators on the beach, government officials, and we’ve been asking very specific questions about what should we be doing in Waikiki and what is your version of Waikiki. Of course that committee’s responsibility doesn’t extend as far down as the natatorium but it might serve as a good model [that] we could look at.
