Erosion at Ka'anapali Beach

What Happened in 2022

West Maui’s coast has always moved. The winter swells that arrive from the North Pacific hit this stretch hard, and the shoreline has cycled through erosion and partial recovery many times. But the scale of the 2022 event broke that pattern.

The Ka’anapali Beachwalk — the paved path running along the resort properties — sustained major structural damage. Sections were undercut and broke off. Ka’anapali Aliʼi Resort, which owns portions of the walkway, faced the question of whether to rebuild at all. Maui County controls the permitting, and there was little appetite for spending money on infrastructure the ocean might take again within a few years.

Climate change is the accelerant. Sea level rise is not a future projection for West Maui — it’s a present condition. It’s making bad erosion years worse and cutting the recovery windows between them shorter.

Chip Fletcher, then interim dean of the University of Hawaiʻi’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, was direct when Hawaii News Now asked him about it: “I’ve never seen erosion get to the extent that it undermined and broke off the sidewalk there.” He framed the situation not as a repair problem but as a relocation problem. The shoreline is moving. The only real response, he argued, is a managed retreat — moving infrastructure back before the ocean forces the issue.

Where Things Stand Now (2026)

The beach has seen partial recovery since 2022. Ka’anapali follows a seasonal rhythm: winter swells erode the shoreline, summer calmer conditions allow some sand to return. The 2022 event was severe enough that full recovery never came, but the beach is accessible again. The resorts are open. Black Rock and the northern portion of Ka’anapali remained reachable through most of the erosion period and still are.

The Beachwalk was partially repaired in some sections, though it’s not what it was. The broader policy debate about whether to keep rebuilding or start planning for retreat has not been resolved. No major managed-retreat program has been implemented. That’s not unusual — it’s a politically difficult conversation, and resort property owners have no financial incentive to advocate for it.

Then August 2023 happened. The Lahaina wildfire killed over 100 people and destroyed most of the historic town just a few miles down the coast. It pulled West Maui’s attention — and state and county resources — toward immediate disaster recovery. Erosion at Ka’anapali became a lower-priority story, even if the underlying problem didn’t pause.

By 2026, Ka’anapali is still one of Maui’s most visited beaches. The resorts are fully operational. If you’re planning a trip, you’ll find sand. What you won’t find is the Beachwalk in its former condition, and what the coastline will look like in another decade is still an open question that nobody in a position to answer it seems eager to address publicly.

Fletcher’s message from 2022 hasn’t changed: the ocean doesn’t negotiate. The only question is whether the response is managed or forced.