By Duane Shimogawa, Reporter - Pacific Business News
The Hunt Companies $14 million restoration of the Beach at Iroquois Point in West Oahu is being recognized as one of four winners of the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association’s 2014 Best Restored Beach Award.
The association, which promotes the integration of science, politics and actions to maintain, protect and enhance the coasts of the U.S., recognized the restored Beach at Iroquois Point in Ewa Beach as “a beautiful and stable sand beach community, recreational resource and greatly improved marine habitat,” that is now extended by 30 to 80 feet over various sections of the nearly mile-long shoreline.
Hunt Cos. began the restoration of the Beach at Iroquois Point in 2012 after nine years of planning and approvals. Hunt Companies sold the community, The Waterfront at Puuloa, to Carmel Partners that year, but still committed to fully restoring the beach.
The restoration project, which was completed in June 2013, covers a stretch of water previously deemed one of the most chronically eroding shorelines on Oahu, requiring the relocation of sewer and other utility lines, causing the loss of 16 homes and resulting in sediment plumes that chronically clouded the near-shore waters. Planning, design and permitting for the beach restoration project was done by Sea Engineering. The project also included help from Hunt Building Companies and Healy Tibbitts Builders.
Thomas Lee, vice president of Hunt Companies, will be joined by Scott Sullivan, vice president of Sea Engineering, Inc., to travel to Washington D.C. in February to receive the award at the ASBPA Coastal Summit.
