Privately funded beach restoration effort helps replenish Sugar Cove - Maui News
Sugar Cove Beach is pictured earlier this month. A beach restoration effort over nearly three decades has brought in 15,000 to 20,000 tons of sand to build the beach back up. Photo courtesy of DLNR
A privately funded beach restoration effort has brought in nearly 20,000 tons of sand at Sugar Cove in Spreckelsville over the course of nearly three decades.
Sugar Cove Condominiums, a complex of 14 homeowners who live adjacent to the beach, has funneled millions of dollars into sand replenishment for the beach.
"The community originally wanted just to protect its watersports access," Rich Salem, president of the Sugar Cove Association of Apartment Owners, explained in a news release from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources on Thursday. "We subsequently realized how precious a resource the beach is, not only just for access, but as a community asset. For more than 20 years we've brought in a total of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of sand to build the beach back up after erosion events and winter storms."
The association used to have a supply of sand on Maui but has recently had to ship in DLNR-approved sand from Oahu.
"We expect we can probably do another 10 years of sand feeding with our stockpile, hoping to build an equilibrium or stasis," Salem said. "It hinges on controlling wave energy on the west side of the pocket beach."
The homeowners have been consulting with coastal specialists from Sea Engineering Inc., as well as experts from the DLNR Office of Coastal and Conservation Lands and the University of Hawaii Sea Grant Program.
"In the 1930s-1960s the beach was so wide, we have pictures of six-man canoes, people picnicking and enjoying what was a wild healthy beach that you could pretty much walk all the way to Baldwin Beach," said Chris Conger of Sea Engineering. "Chronic erosion began impacting this entire coastline more than 50 years ago."
Fighting beach loss and the prospect of someday ending up with no sand, the homeowners and the experts are looking at potentially shoring up a natural rock groin on the west side, according to the news release.
The homeowners are continuing to work with their consultants and the DLNR to explore the science of integrating a natural-looking groin to protect the beach and to also enhance beaches below, while they continue to explore sand sources.
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