Honolulu Weekly

As the person who tends the heiau that line Wailua bay and river, Jim Alalem has a special sense about the region’s cultural value.

“It’s the most sacred area on Kauai,” he said. “No place else on Kauai but there were kings born. That’s where the first drums came up from Tahiti. Most of the history and legends came out of that area. They should leave it alone, and leave in intact.”

Instead, the County of Kauai plans to install a 14-foot-wide wooden boardwalk on the beach as part of its 16-mile Ke Ala Hele Makalae coastal multi-use path project on the island’s east side.

Doug Haigh, the Department of Public Works’ building division chief, acknowledged that at the design meeting for the path, “people were expressing concerns, saying it’s a sacred beach and we shouldn’t do anything. But there’s a highway there. It’s not like we’re introducing a new element there.”

Opponents, however, say that while there’s nothing they can do about Kuhio Highway, they’re motivated by the desire to, as Alalem phrased it, “save what’s left.”

“It’s a huge burial area,” said Sophie Josselin, a Kapaa resident who participated in a recent silent protest against the Wailua Beach boardwalk. “Part of that was given up when Kuhio Highway and Coco Palms were built. This is the last remaining, very small portion of that burial. We would like to see it intact.”

“It’s kind of weird to have walking and jogging on that bike path like that,” Alalem said. “It’s desecration.”

Waldeen Palmeira, who along with Alalem sent the county a letter in 2004 raising cultural objections to placing the path on the beach, has collected historical photographs showing iwi, or bones, protruding from the sand, as well as evidence that a heiau once stood on the beach.

Haigh said the path project “piggybacked” on an a cultural assessment that was done for Kapaa traffic relief measures, and neither it nor the Environmental Assessment raised any issues about Wailua Beach “being particularly sensitive.”

Nevertheless, he said, an archaeologist will be on site “in areas that SHPD [State Historic Preservation Division] thinks is sensitive, and that’s beyond what’s required by law.”

But Carl Berg, a marine biologist and member of the Kauai Chapter of the Sierra Club, said he was concerned about plans to use a two-foot-diameter screw auger to drill eight feet into the sand to make concrete pilings to secure the wooden boardwalk. “What if you go into a burial?” he asked. “You’ll destroy it, grind it right up.”

The Sierra Club also maintains that removing coastal vegetation and building atop the dunes could hasten coastal erosion. The group prefers to see the beach left in its “natural, untouched state,” said Kauai chapter president Judy Dalton, and recommended the county move the path mauka, either in front of or behind Coco Palms Resort, which has been shuttered since Hurricane Iniki struck in 1992.

Haigh said he initially wanted the path to run behind Coco Palms, but “we had overwhelming response that people wanted it on the beach, so that’s what pushed us over there. With this project, we’ve had a lot of public meetings. We went beyond the legal requirements because we acknowledge the coastal environment is a sensitive environment and this is a public project for the benefit of the community. It’s been public-driven. We’ll never have something everybody can agree on.”

The issue is further complicated by the fact that the path will double as the Americans With Disabilities Act-mandated pedestrian access for a project to widen Wailua Bridge to four lanes, which is providing funding to construct the boardwalk.

Berg said that if the county is intent on building the path on the beach, a wooden boardwalk is more appropriate than the concrete that’s being used to construct the path elsewhere along the coast. “Right now, the water level is only a foot or so below the beach,” he said, noting that in 20 years, if the sea level rises and destroys the boardwalk, the county won’t have lost such a big investment.

Josselin concurred. “I liken it to the erosion that’s happening to our culture.”