The Conversation was in the area of the Halekulani Hotel with coastal geologist Dolan Eversole. He is with the University of Hawaiʻi's Sea Grant Program and has been tapped by the Waikīkī Beach Special Improvement District Association.
Eversole has been tasked to develop a plan to help with the chronic erosion and needed beach restoration. He brought The Conversation down to the beach area between the Halekulani Hotel and the Outrigger Reef Waikiki Beach Resort. He said that what we see there today is a result of several years worth of erosion that appears to be accelerating.
"We're here at the ocean end of this beach, which has been pretty severely eroded, there's a concrete walkway that has collapsed, and the rubble of that concrete walkway remains,” Eversole said. "Access through here is restricted. Technically, it is a closed walkway, although people are still finding their way through here. There is a shared and universal concern that there is a public safety hazard with this beach and the adjacent walkway on the Halekulani seawall.”
Eversole said there has been efforts and interest to temporarily close this walkway for public access due to safety concerns.
"The beach has deflated about five or six feet where the sand used to be up to the top of the seawall, and there was really no transition from the walkway to the beach,” he said. "Whereas now it's about five or six feet down to the water, so you literally would have to climb up over the wall and over this concrete rubble. I think it's fair to say this is a less than ideal situation, and clearly, because of public health and safety, it warrants temporary closure till this area can be fixed up."
Eversole explained that this episodic erosion has recently become more permanent and has undermined a portion of their retaining wall and the sea wall on the seaward side.
He also shared that there have been efforts underway to develop an interim solution.
"There's a group of stakeholders here in Waikīkī, including the WBSIDA, to investigate potential strategies to mitigate some of the erosion here,” Eversole said. "And really the intent is to stabilize this beach cell in order to restore it to even a former configuration of like a small pocket beach, maybe 20 or 30 feet wide that existed here, maybe as recently as five years ago. So that's a goal of an interim solution is to stabilize the area, place some sand, with the hopes that that will last a couple to several years.”
The long-term strategy is a proposed three rock T-head groin structure that would then be placed with about 60,000 cubic yards of offshore sand.
Eversole adds that any stabilization and mitigation work of the area would potentially be a joint project between the state Department of Land and Natural Resources and WBSIDA.
He visits the area frequently to keep eyes on the erosion and finds that each time, it's a little bit worse.
"We're in a triggered state of what appears to be a perpetual state of erosion," Eversole said. “And as that shoreline and the sand erodes away, it is slowly progressing landward through this beach right away. So each time I come it's about five more feet landward, and it reveals more of this debris that we're seeing collapsed concrete and old structures and things like that.
“It's very clear that we have to do something. We can't just let it erode, because now we're seeing all types of impacts to infrastructure, not just private infrastructure, but public infrastructure is now being damaged, and there are environmental impacts from letting this erode. Eventually, if we let it go long enough, we'll start to see the destruction of things like sewer lines and utilities and that's in no one's interest to see that get damaged.”
To learn more about Halekulani-Sheraton Public Walkway, click here.
Halekulani and Outrigger Hospitality Group are underwriters of HPR.
This interview aired on The Conversation on May 7, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
