Waikiki Beach (Artficial, BTW) Losing One Horizontal Foot Per Year To Rising Ocean

[hatrack]

EDIT

A crumbling, century-old stone wall that juts out from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel is in imminent danger of collapsing, say scientists. The groin is the sole reason sand remains along this main stretch of Waikiki Beach. Without it, the beach in front of the Royal Hawaiian would likely disappear in a matter of days, said Dolan Eversole, a scientist with the University of Hawaii’s Sea Grant program. It would take several months to a year for the rest of the stretch of sand to erode.

Most visitors may not know it, but Waikiki Beach is almost entirely man-made. It has had erosion problems since the late-1800s when developers began erecting hotels and homes too close to the natural shoreline and building seawalls and other structures that blocked the natural ebb and flow of sand along the beach. By 1950, more than 80 structures, including seawalls, groins, piers and storm drains, were counted along the Waikiki shoreline, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report.

Efforts to combat the resulting erosion have been haphazard, however, and with sea level rise now claiming about a foot of the beach a year, the threat of losing Waikiki Beach has become more dire.

“Waikiki is arguably as important as a slice of the H-1 and if a part of the H-1 needed maintenance there would be no question that we would go and maintain it, repave it, fill potholes,” said Chip Fletcher, a coastal geologist and associate dean at the University of Hawaii’s School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology. “Well, that is what we are doing to Waikiki Beach -- it’s maintenance. If it costs millions of dollars, there is abundant economic justification for that.”

EDIT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/saving-waikiki-beach-erosion_n_6835424.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. I was just there, right on that beach up until Sunday when I flew home.

Very warm water. Hiked up to Diamond Head on Friday, it's a nice hike!

Waikiki is beach development gone Cuckoo, but not as crazy as some parts of the middle east, i suppose.

[hatrack]

2. Could be worse - could be Cyprus

Loved the description in "The World Without Us" - current developers not even washing the salt out of the beach sand before making cement for "Dream Homes" out of it.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Ha, the formula for empire building seems to have been lost with the formula for hydraulic cement.

Except that the cement recipe was finally rediscovered.

Salt in cement? That's not good.

[msongs]

4. and here we are thinking how chilly the water is getting due to the "cold" winter we're having lol

[Politicalboi]

5. Where's Inohoff

With his coconut toss.

[hunter]

6. Silly humans. Beaches are always shifty things.

It's probably too late for a managed retreat from Waikiki.

It's pretty easy to picture an artificial beach on an artificial lagoon, protected by a natural-stone look Disney designed concrete seawall someday.

Here's an article on Waikiki from CoastalCare.org:

Waikiki Beach Is Totally Man-Made And Disappearing. Can Hawaii Save It?



Most visitors may not know it, but Waikiki Beach is almost entirely man-made. It has had erosion problems since the late-1800s when developers began erecting hotels and homes too close to the natural shoreline and building seawalls and other structures that blocked the natural ebb and flow of sand along the beach.

By 1950, more than 80 structures, including seawalls, groins, piers and storm drains, were counted along the Waikiki shoreline.

Efforts to combat the resulting erosion have been haphazard, however, and with sea level rise now claiming about a foot of the beach a year, the threat of losing Waikiki Beach has become more dire…

http://coastalcare.org/2015/03/waikiki-beach-is-totally-man-made-and-disappearing-can-hawaii-save-it

[truebrit71]

7. There are many, much better beaches than Waikiki on Oahu...

...but this should serve as a wake-up call to those that continue to deny....

(It probably won't...but hope springs eternal...)