 And what it's doing to properties along the coast, and the Office of Planning is being very proactive in saying, well, how do we deal with this? So what we're going to do is they've actually done a study, we're going to talk about the study they've done, and try to figure out what can we do about this. So first of all, let's put a slide up because the second slide, I think it kind of illustrates the problem. So on this slide you'll see on the right probably a North Shore house that's severely, the beach is severely eroded and it's attacking the actual house itself, eventually it'll probably fall into the ocean. So that's kind of frames the situation or the problem. So what I'd like to ask you ladies, I'll start off with Justine, is what are we planning to do about that, and tell us about your plan. Sure, maybe I can speak briefly about where we come from in the Coastal Zone Management Program, if that's okay. We are a federally funded state partnership with NOAA Office for Coastal Management, and the purpose of the program which is housed in our State Office of Planning is to look at a balanced perspective of managing development in regards to consideration of our state's natural resources. In terms of sea level rise, this is absolutely an issue that we're looking at as part of our coastal hazards is sea levels are rising and a lot of the development that has been permitted in the past is now in the way. And how do we grapple with that? The state has a sea level rise report on showing the projections, and some of the conversations that we've been a part of and been hearing are, you know, we need to adapt and we understand that we absolutely do, and we know how to protect and accommodate to an extent, but how do we retreat from sea level rise and coastal erosion, and that's exactly what this report is looking at and stemmed by an action team from our state ocean resources management plan. How do we retreat? Well, that's a really complicated question. What the report does is we've performed a background report with a literature review from successful implementation of managed retreat. Also took into consideration the experiences of two different areas, New Jersey being one and then California and the Ventura Coast being another of successful implementation of managed retreat. Excuse me, let me jump in. This is based off of a catastrophic event that Justine was talking about for New Jersey, a catastrophic event from Superstorm Sandy, and a catastrophic event that I'm referring to means like a large event like a Superstorm Sandy or a hurricane. And then the other event that Justine was talking about is in Ventura County, California, which is a chronic coastal erosion, such as what we experience here in Hawaii often times is rising sea levels or coastal shoreline erosion due to rising sea levels or high surf events which erode our shoreline. So we took a look at those two types of events in generating our report, chronic coastal erosion which causes erosion of our beaches and catastrophic events because those are what we find in our report that causes managed retreat. Okay, so I was just reading an article in Civil Beat yesterday about a person who was building a brand new house on the North Shore, and if you look at the picture in Civil Beat, like here's the road, and the ocean's right up to the road, it's already eroding the road and directly across the street from the road, this person is building a brand new house. Like $440,000 just on the lot, and who knows what the cost of the house will be once he gets that up, but that seems to be kind of a rash move. I guess you don't want to comment on that, but maybe you can comment on the fact that we're still seem to be building houses right next to the ocean when the ocean is expanding because it's heating up and that's causing sea level rise. So how can we address this kind of thing? Is it something that the state has any responsibility for, or is it just telling this guy, look here's the situation and you're here at your own risk? Any kind of comments on that, Justine? It's probably a little bit of both. I think sea level rise is not something that's new and it's not something that the state is hiding from. Last year they issued a sea level rise report through the Climate Commission and the sea, as you mentioned, is right there in this case and I can't speak to the property owner and this developer, but I think that there's only so much you can do and we can do outreach and education about the risks, but the property owner is taking a potential risk themselves. Are there a lot of complications to this? Sandy, we talked briefly before we started the show. What about insurance? I mean, can people who build their houses right next to the ocean like that work? Obviously it's going to get inundated sometime. Well if you have a mortgage and your mortgage requires you to get insurance, then the insurance is generally dictated by the National Flood Insurance Program, which is a national program. Federal program? Federal, excuse me, you're correct, it's a federal program. And so federal programs are federally subsidized by our federal tax dollars and that is slowly changing in 2020. It will change to be a more risk-based assessment and so our federal flood insurance program will be much higher, our premiums will be much higher than it is currently now. So if you are a very wealthy individual and you could afford your property outright and do not need to acquire a mortgage, then you probably, you may not have, you may not get insurance, but that's at your own risk. So I lived in Texas and I lived in Florida and I lived in Virginia and near the beach and every four or five years a major storm comes in and washes all these houses out, but they all had this federal flood insurance and they just like rebuilt their house. There was no personal problem other than, you know, losing some of their personal property and all that kind of stuff, but it just seems like they just, you know, oh I don't care, the feds are going to bail me out and they're going to get a new house out of this. Yes, that is a concern and yes, our federal flood insurance program is under capitalized, it's underwater, so that is a concern. Yes, and so they are changing it in 2020 is what I've been reading. So hopefully it will give some people pause to purchase near the shore or near and low inland flood prone areas because their mortgage will require them to buy flood insurance and that flood insurance will be very expensive for them to afford. So that's like a distant scent of build your house beside the ocean less. Like you said, you're a very wealthy individual and you know, what's a couple of million dollars? I like the experience. I'm going to live here as long as I can. No worries, right? It could be. So has there any, have you visited any of the communities up there on the North Shore and other areas where it could be prone to this kind of situation? We both have visited North Shore communities and neighbor island communities are subject to coastal erosion, chronic coastal erosion. So what are they saying? What's the, what's the community, what's the feel that you get from the community? Is there any sense of urgency and are they saying, oh my God, what can we do or what can you do for us? What's the situation with the community up there? Well, we haven't had through the project itself, there were a couple of focus groups in some of these areas. And that was supported by our consultant for the most part. And so they did provide some insight into the report. However, we haven't engaged with the communities themselves. We're in the state office of planning, which is mostly like the statewide policy level. And we haven't really had the same opportunities to do that. So talking about policies, what are some of the complications of policy? Can you just give an edict, thou shalt move thy house from the shore inland two miles, or what are all the issues? You're a lawyer by trade. So tell us how complicated this could be. When we first started with the Manager Treat project, we thought that the state office of planning thought that we could just come up with a checklist. Like if you do one, two, three, four, five, six, you could just move whether it is a whole urban area along the shore, whether it's a condominium, whether it's a road or sewage treatment plant or a single family home. If you just did one, two, three, four, five, six, you could move. But that's just not the case. There are so many different issues at stake. There is social justice issues. If you are a very wealthy individual and bought your home as an investment property versus a Kama'aina family that's lived there for generations and inherited your property, are you treated the same? Should the state buy you out? Does the state have the funds to buy you out? Exactly. I mean, that's a big question as well. And then if we move you back, where do we move you to? Is there infrastructure inland to move you to? Because we're moving a whole segment of the community inland. Is there infrastructure? Is there hospitals? Are there schools? Everything. Are there roads? Utilities? You are a utility person. Is there a support system to move you to? And so how much is that going to cost the state? So going on to that, as part of your analysis, are you putting together like an economic model of how much this might cost so that we can sort of capture the magnitude of the problem and start looking at how are we going to pay for it? Or what are we going to do? Well, I don't think we have plans for an economic model to look at 750 miles of shoreline and moving all of that back. Because I think looking at the complexities, that's just not possible. I think what the report really alludes to is that the state will have to be very strategic in working with the counties to determine if managed retreat is considered as an adaptation option, what it is that we invest our dollars into that supports the communities and protects from coastal flooding and inundation in the future. So I think it's identifying what the priorities need to be and which will help determine how those funds are allocated. So can you do a trade-off between managed retreat and armoring your shoreline? I know in your report you talked briefly about those options. Is that something, you know, a trade-off between the economics of moving everybody inland as opposed to, you know, putting in dykes like they did in, you know, they do in Holland, you know, and barriers? Well, I mean, that's interesting. I think those are very different analyses. So if you put in dykes and lose the beaches, what are the costs to the community in terms of recreation and public trust and the subsistence factors in terms of utilizing those resources that we, you know, market to the world as to come to our beaches and lay in our sand? And on the other hand, you know, can you move certain built structures? Oh, look at Waikiki, the big hotels. I mean, I've seen water sloshing right up against the foundation, some of them tell us. Until they start pumping more sand and, you know, building the beach backup. Yeah, and a lot of states are grappling with the same issue, and there's different options that they've done. You know, beach renourishment is something that the state is looking at as well, and that's a potential temporary solution, but you have to keep replenishing and maintaining that, and that's almost like an infrastructure, operations and maintenance budget. Absolutely, every, what, three to five years, you have to replenish, yeah. And maybe that'll happen more frequently as the, you know, as the storms get worse and washes sand out. Of course, sometimes a storm will actually wash sand in. It's like almost overnight sometimes, wow, where did all that sand come from? So what's going on in the legislature? You're in the policy department, you said, you look at policy. So what are the people thinking at the top level? What kind of policies are we thinking about right now? Well, there's certainly a lot related to sea level rise and climate change. They're narrowing down as is kind of the season. We've seen bills that are related to establishing a sea level rise relocation program to looking at incorporating more extreme levels of sea level rise. Also, where to armor and where to do retreat. There's also been proposed changes to our statute into a 5A for the Coastal Zone Management Act here in the state. What else is there? Real estate disclosures. Real estate disclosures, that's a big one. That's a big one. And purchasers' disclosures as well, I think on the other side, there was one. And then looking at different types of solutions to sea level rise via nature-based solutions, I think is another one. What's a nature-based solution? Using green infrastructure versus hardening. Like putting in mangroves or things like that to help? No, we don't put mangroves in in Hawaii, they're invasive. Yeah. If we could do dune restorations, that's a nature-based solution versus like a sea wall. Well, we're gonna cut to a short break right now and we'll be back after the break, so take us away. Hey, loha, my name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii, airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests, I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We wanna teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because security matters, aloha. Aloha and mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhay and aloha. Okay, I had a question I asked you guys in the green room or whatever before we start off about ownership of the land. Like when the property gets inundated, does that property revert back to the state? And what about landowners rights? Have we put the name of that yet? What's the story? And taxes, because then your property is severely devalued or non-existent. So the county is gonna lose a ton of taxes. So I'm here to comment on that. We did look at the property values if we retreat in the report. And we were concerned that issue was raised if we retreat what happens to the county's tax base because the counties derive a lot of their tax dollars from high coastal properties. And so that was a consideration that we had to take into account if we were treated. And so, yes, that was something we needed to discuss with the counties. That was another factor in to manage retreat because, yeah. Okay. So what about moving roads? Have you actually looked at moving roads? And the other question I would have on that part of that question is, like, how far do you move it in? And do you move it up? Like, if we raise the roads up to, say, 100 feet off the deck along the edge of the mountains as we go along and then we have little feeder roads down below, is that something you guys have looked at or is that, who does that? You wanna talk about the example? I think you could talk about Ventura County. Yeah, so one of the examples of implementation was in Ventura County where a two-mile bike path was being chronically eroded. And part of the challenge was determining how, you know, if they could move it and they did. But it took about 20 years and this is two miles. And it was either, I forget if the path was on state property and then moved to county or county and state, forget. But two government entities negotiating, moving the bike path and then it would encroach on some of the parking spaces of a local fairground which wasn't received particularly well. And that took over 20 years for a two-mile bike path. So those are some of the complications that we can take in a few factor in private land ownership and private structures and other infrastructure like sewer, water lines and power that just adds to the complication. And so it's not particularly clear how long it would take but it may take a while and a lot of conversation. So I'm kind of hearing this all tied up in the courts while sea water is still, it's not gonna wait for the lawyers to fight it out and duke it out, it's happening. So maybe we just need to look at armoring, like putting in these barriers. That might be the easiest way to go. What do you guys think? Okay. Oh, well, it depends what you mean by easy. You'd also have to consider habitat loss for species and recreation loss for the public. Where the sea turtle's gonna bask and they're endangered. Are we adding to their loss of habitat? When you market Hawaii now, will we have sea walls and people basking on sea walls? I mean, those are some of, it's just some of some of the things that wouldn't make it easy, I think. So, yeah. Well, I guess there's, there don't appear to be any silver bullets out there. That's the thing, you know. You look at what Chip Fletcher at the University of Hawaii does is his inundation maps, like they're really scary. Doesn't take a lot to flood out all the Waikiki and take out the airport and all that. And we seem to be already running into opposition, like they wanna put in a flood control at the Alawai Canal. And I read an article today or yesterday that they had a community meeting about it and the community came out really hard against it. Do you care to comment on that? Is there any kind of a solution here? I don't think we work on the Alawai Canal issue, but I think in Hawaii, you know, we're a small community and I think it's excellent that people are engaged in what's going on in this town. I think we have to get out in front and educate people on what's going on. And I think so long as people are aware of the issues, I think it'll turn out well. I think it's just when people are not educated and people don't feel like they have a voice. I think that's when things go sideways. Okay, great, lead in. Can you put up the first slide, Rich? So I wanna lead into your report, which is, you know, it's a report. I read through it, it's well done and it's an educational document and you're here on Think Tech Hawaii to get the word out. So we definitely want people to know that there's a report. There's a lot of good work done on it. So would you care to comment or talk about your report? Something you should be proud of. Well, the report can be accessed on our website, certainly at www.planning.hawaii.gov and it is funded by our federal partners at NOAA. Thank you very much. And yes, I think it's an excellent report that starts a conversation that is going to be a really challenging conversation. But, you know, having, considering adaptation and putting that into the planning process and having that process to engage the public and educate the public, like Sandy mentioned, about, you know, what some of the risks are, what the challenges may be and how we can potentially move forward in certain areas is definitely part of the solution to addressing, you know, these very daunting presentations by Dr. Fletcher about some of the risks that we have. Can you add anything? Yeah, he was a sub-consultant on this report. Jim Fletcher. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so we talked to the general public, we educate them and everything like that. What's the, you know, what do we expect them to do? What's the outcome of that? I mean, they can become aware. Okay, okay, I'm aware. And once again, the report talks a little bit of what we can do about it. But bottom line is it's going to cost a lot of money, no matter what happens. And we're stretched right now, this state. We've got rail, which has really become expensive. We've got all the other issues, homelessness, housing, education, everybody's out trying to get, you know, on their particular program. So any comments about that that you can talk about or not? No, we do have some really hard choices to make. And when the time comes, we have to make the hard choice. Are we going to continue building along the shore? Are we going to continue armoring our shoreline and losing our precious beaches and habitats? You know, we have to make those hard choices. Let's not make those decisions harder on ourselves and on our future, on our children, on our environment. You know, let's make the correct decisions. You know, we have the tools here in front of us. We have, you know, the research materials in front of us to make the correct decision now for the future. Let's do that. Okay, so what are the kind of next steps that you're going to look at? I would think that economic modeling, so we know the scope of the problem would be kind of helpful. Is that something you got? I mean, I'll throw that out as a suggestion. Yeah, I like that. Okay. I know that's definitely something to consider. We also wanted to look at, for example, where other types of retreat, like transfer development rights or rolling easements, have been successfully done. We want to reengage with our action team to, after they've had some time to digest this report and, you know, expand our stakeholder base to continue the conversation and learn what else we need to know to be able to make these decisions in a concerted way. So maybe we could buy some time, like putting houses on spills. Like if you go in Texas and you go on these coastal areas, every house there is built on these big piling. Some of them are like 10, well, higher than that, 15, 20 feet high. So they box it all into the lower level, use it at the store stuff. But bottom line is the sea can rush in at a major event and swish all that out, but the house is still standing and eventually recedes. Hopefully you get a storm that piles some sand back up on the beach. Maybe we should be talking to our smart architects. Yeah, accommodation is one of the adaptation methods. Reference. It's a reference, yeah. Well, we've come to the end of our time. Are there any parting words that you ladies would like to share? Well, no, I think thanks for having us on the show. And the Coastal Zone Management Program, we are dedicated to looking at a balanced perspective, including managed retreat as a part of the conversation in terms of adaptation. And I think there's gonna be a gamut of strategies that we'll have to employ and there's no one magic bullet for our entire coastline. Although we all want one, we certainly do. You know, states all over the country, states, you know, countries are dealing with this. And so we would look forward to engaging with additional people and members to work together as this is a state issue, the people that live here. And it's not one agency issue, one office or program. It really is something that we all have to work towards together to find a solution on how we're gonna have a great future in Hawaii. We're all in that same canoe, right? Absolutely. In the same direction. Well, I think it's really great that the state planning office is taking this initiative. Thank you, ladies, for participating. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for having us. Thank you for your service, as they always say. Great, so that's it. So I'll see you next Wednesday at the Hawaii, the state of clean energy.