At Baldwin Beach, the Repair Plan Is Mostly Removal

"The plants keep growing up and accumulate more sand," Tara Owens, an extension agent with the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program, told The Maui News in July. "They can accept the wind, the sun, the waves, and they won't die."

She was talking about the old pavilion site at Kapukaʻulua, also known as H.A. Baldwin Park. When the pavilion came out, it left a hollow in the sand. A test plot of native groundcover has since caught enough windblown sand to turn that hollow into a mound. That experiment shaped this year's plan for the park. The County scheduled tree cutting and new native planting pockets for the summer, and the pavilion is not coming back. At Baldwin, the County and its partners are rebuilding the beach mostly by taking out what people put there.

Where the pavilion used to stand

The County removed the pavilion on Sept. 25 and 26, 2024, after high surf and rising sea levels damaged it beyond repair, and the park reopened on Sept. 27. According to The Maui News' July 2026 report, the dune restoration team decided not to rebuild it and is growing native plants on the site to help the dunes rebuild.

The pavilion wasn't the first building to lose ground here. A preliminary Baldwin Beach Study StoryMap includes a 2003 photo of sand piles stacked to slow washover into a bathroom and shed makai of the pavilion. It also links Maui Now's 2011 coverage of a concrete restroom that half-collapsed onto the beach after erosion undercut its foundation. The same study measured the erosion hot spot near the Cove and the former pavilion. Between Sept. 1, 2012, and Aug. 29, 2024, the shoreline there moved 77 feet inland.

That number explains the decision. A new pavilion in the same spot would have been built on a shoreline that had already lost 77 feet in twelve years.

Why this stretch loses sand faster than its neighbors

The causes go back about a century. The project area runs from the Pāʻia Youth Center to Wawau Point. Starting in the early 1900s, that coast was mined for sand for decades, and the sand went into hydrated lime for sugarcane fields and into concrete. The StoryMap includes a 1922 topographic map showing a cement plant at Kapukaʻulua, sand reaching out to the rocks offshore of the Cove, and the remains of 30-foot dunes along the shore.

The black boulders you can still see were part of the same history. They sit about 100 feet out into the ocean and once served as a rock revetment around the old Pāʻia lime kiln. "The beach used to be out there," Owens told The Maui News. "That's the former position of the shoreline back in the early 1900s."

Owens explained that the revetment blocks sand that would otherwise move along the shore, "and so you get this sort of deficit right here." The StoryMap describes the Cove as an erosion feature downdrift of the kiln revetment. Erosion is worst there at the end of summer, but sand returns seasonally, so the Cove has a usable beach most of the year.

So the beach is short of sand because of two things people did here, the mining and the revetment. That's why the current plan focuses so much on removal. According to The Maui News, part of the team's goal is to remove manmade structures and invasive vegetation that disrupt the natural movement of sand and keep native plants from taking hold.

The ironwoods are part of the problem

The trees getting cut are not random. Owens told The Maui News that work was moving forward to selectively cut certain ironwoods and replace them with patches of native plants along the coast, from the Pāʻia Youth Center to the old lime kiln site. She said some of the trees were close to falling, and that their fallen needles keep plants from growing underneath, which stops the dunes from building naturally. "Basically, they're destructive," she said. The project's restoration strategies call for removing ironwood and other invasive trees in phases so that native vegetation and trees can be planted successfully.

On July 15, the County of Maui Department of Parks and Recreation published a phased schedule for the 2026 work and noted that dates could change with the weather.

"Flush cutting" means invasive trees are cut down to ground level. The County's Department of ʻŌiwi Resources leads cultural and archaeological monitoring under a plan reviewed by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and approved by the State Historic Preservation Division, and biological monitoring checks for species of concern. The work is led by the UH Sea Grant Program with the Surfrider Foundation Maui Chapter and the County, and it is funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The Maui News reported the grant at more than $1 million.

The plants going in are mostly native vines and grasses that hold dunes in place, including pōhuehue, or beach morning glory, ʻākulikuli and ʻakiʻaki grass. These are the same three species the County named for a 750-plant volunteer planting it scheduled in October 2025.

The proof is already at the Youth Center

The Maui News reported that in pilot areas where native groundcover was planted, the dunes are rebuilding. Owens said new plant growth at the Pāʻia Youth Center added enough height to stop waves from washing into the park there.

"It's a good model for what we hope the endpoint would be for all of Kapukaulua. We've gained a lot of elevation there, and now the waves don't wash into the park."

Owens gave that assessment in the same Maui News story. The labor behind it is local. She said a community workday can bring 30 to 40 volunteers, working alongside Sea Grant staff and three County parks workers who maintain the restoration sites.

Late October is when the sand comes back

The timing of all this follows the beach's own calendar. Owens explained that in spring and summer, northeast trade winds push waves and sand from east to west. Erosion usually peaks around the end of August or early September. Then the beach recovers once winter swells arrive, "That's when the sand gets pushed back from west to east," she told The Maui News. Earlier this year, the beach near the Cove widened by at least 100 feet.

The summer cutting and kipuka planting were scheduled to wrap up in mid-September, right at the low point of that cycle. The planted pockets now have the incoming winter sand to work with. The StoryMap's longer view is a useful check on that hope. Winter does reverse the summer erosion at the Cove for a while, but over the long term the Cove and the former pavilion area are still eroding. The plants are there so that more of each winter's sand stays put.

Three dates on the Pāʻia calendar

Restoration is one track. The other is a new plan for the whole park. The County's Oct. 19 notice calls Kapukaʻulua its largest beach park, describing 86 acres of beach, lawns, trails and forest tracts that include the Pāʻia Youth and Cultural Center and the Rinzai Zen Mission. The County says the interim master plan written from 2018 through 2020 needs updating because severe weather destroyed the pavilion, coastal hazards got worse, and the County has acquired more Alexander & Baldwin land since 2014.

1. Wednesday, Nov. 4, 5 to 7 p.m. The H.A. Baldwin Park Adaptation Plan community meeting is at Pāʻia Community Center and on Zoom, Meeting ID 832 6591 0691, passcode 440109. The County describes the plan as a chance to shape how Baldwin serves the local community while adapting to sea-level rise and other coastal hazards. Background is on the County's adaptation plan page.
2. Friday, Nov. 13. Sea Grant lists a Dune Restoration Celebration as its next engagement event, with a flyer and a sign-up for project email updates on the Maui Dune Program page.
3. After bird-nesting season in November. This is when the County plans the last round of pruning and flush cutting, in spots where sensitive species may have been found.

After that, the draft adaptation plan, prepared by DPR and consultant SSFM International, is scheduled to be presented on March 3, 2027, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Pāʻia Community Center. Public review follows before the plan is finalized in summer 2027.

Some online listings for Baldwin still show a covered picnic pavilion. Where it stood, there is now a mound of native groundcover, and the Nov. 4 meeting is where Pāʻia gets to say what the rest of the park should look like around it.

Mino and Sam have watched this coast change for a long time. If you'd like to talk through what the Baldwin plan could mean for life on the North Shore, Mino McLean is glad to sit down with you. Request a personalized consultation.