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For Denise Antolini, the growl of a backhoe chopping down an unauthorized seawall on Oahu’s Sunset Beach on a recent morning was the sound of progress.

The wall, she said, is the first to come down under a 2020 law amending the state’s coastal zone statute to protect beaches from the effects of such structures, which have been found to exacerbate erosion to a point that some beaches have disappeared.

“I’m very proud of that,” she said, gesturing to a sign with a public notice that the wall was coming down, pursuant to a legal settlement. “I feel like we’re protecting the community — and the beach.”

Antolini’s campaign against illegal structures on one of Hawaii’s iconic beaches is hardly her first battle for the environment, and it surely won’t be her last. 

As an environmental lawyer, Antolini has spent 36 years fighting to protect the environment. Working with what was then called the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, she helped protect the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest and the Newell’s shearwater, Dark-rumped petrel and Hawaiian crow in the islands. She also worked on landmark clean water and water rights cases.

Antolini was eventually recruited to join the environmental law program at the University of Hawaii’s William S. Richardson School of Law. She later directed the program and trained a generation of young lawyers. As the associate dean for academic affairs at Richardson, Antolini helped to develop the Law School Clinical Building.

During her decades at UH, Antolini’s activist work was a pro bono side pursuit, perhaps best illustrated by her role co-founding the environmental group . She was careful to keep her law school position separate from her community advocacy.

Now Antolini is retired from the law school and turning her attention to activism full time. The former law school dean is unleashed. 

“She has allegedly retired,” said Randy Moore, a former chairman of the UH Board of Regents who lives on Sunset Beach. But he said Antolini is as active as ever. “She’s just a ball of energy, and she has a manner that’s persistent but not threatening.”

Antolini has also gotten into local politics for the first time, being elected to the North Shore Neighborhood Board in July 2023. 

“Before, when she was working, she was multitasking,” said Racquel Achiu, a North Shore rancher who is vice chair of the neighborhood board and an Antolini ally. “Now that she has more time to commit, she’s in it.”

Organizing a Network of Allies

What it means for Antolini to be “in it” was on display recently when reporters and editors from Civil Beat held a pop-up newsroom event at the North Shore’s Historic Haleiwa Gym. 

Antolini didn’t come alone. She and a crew of fellow gadflies fanned out among the journalists seated at tables on the basketball court. Antolini briefed one reporter about Sunset Beach. Two other activists told an editor how an all-terrain vehicle operation was creating a nuisance for neighbors. There was talk of fake farms driving out real agriculture, and an update on Sharks Cove, the snorkeling spot that’s been overrun with tourists, food trucks and other things hardly beneficial to a sensitive marine ecosystem.

It wasn’t an accident that the activists showed up en masse.

“It was very strategic,” Achiu said. Antolini “shared the info with me, and I was like, ‘Wow, what an opportunity.’”

This ability of Antolini’s to amplify her influence through allies is well known, and was evidenced at the Capitol the day before the pop-up newsroom. Hawaii senators on May 3 were grilling Hawaii Department of Agriculture officials about the identity of a landscaping company whose pest-infested plants were thought responsible for temporarily shutting down Punahou Carnival’s plant sale in February. 

Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, a former student of Antolini, not only named the alleged spreader of invasive little fire ants but also called out the agriculture department for refusing to do so.

Later Keohokalole credited Antolini with giving him real-world experience on invasive species issues through a fellowship program she set up for law school graduates with a multi-agency, public-private partnership that deals with “.” That gave him the ability to understand issues in the agriculture department and call out the officials when necessary, he said.

“Her impact is really broad,” said Keohokalole, chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection. “She kind of created me. She got me my first job out of law school, and after that I ran for office.”

‘To Me It’s All About the Beach’

On a walking tour of Sunset Beach, Antolini dropped by the home of a resident and encouraged him to attend a meeting to discuss a new bill passed in the most recent legislative session.  was another victory for the North Shore’s oceans and beaches, securing $1.5 million to create an environmental management plan for the area. The resident, who asked not to identified, said he probably wouldn’t be there.

Antolini pressed him to participate, saying it was fine if there was disagreement.

“The homeowners can say, ‘I like that,’” she said. “And the enviros can say, ‘That sucks.’”

Still, the focus of Antolini’s trip to Sunset Beach was artificial barriers: both solid walls and systems of half-buried giant sandbags known as burritos. Many houses on Sunset Beach have such structures, although Antolini said they’re mostly illegal.

While hardening the shoreline in front of homes, the walls and sand burritos  by sending crashing waves and sand back out to sea. Michael Cain, director of the Hawaii Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, said the office wants to protect the North Shore’s beaches.

“We’re hoping that we can save the North Shore and prevent it from becoming another Waikiki,” he said. “There is no beach in some areas.”

Cain said the wall coming down is a good step, but that people generally need to be forced to remove them.

“I don’t see people removing unauthorized structures until they’ve been brought before the board,” he said.  

People want to protect their property from the ocean, especially winter swells that drive big waves increasingly close to their homes.

Moore, the former UH regent, said he once had a yard between his house and the beach but it’s washed away. Fortunately, he said, his lot is deep. He is planning to move his house away from the beach, where it has a better chance of surviving for a long time.

Others aren’t so lucky, Moore said. They have waves washing away the beach on one side of their homes and nowhere to go on the other. Managed retreat doesn’t work for them, he said.

“What’s the long-term answer?” he said. “If anyone has one, it has yet to be clearly articulated to me.”

In the meantime, Antolini is continuing to spread the message that illegal structures damage the beach. She sympathizes with long-time residents whose homes are threatened, but has less aloha for speculators who recently bought beach houses to be vacation rentals and now refuse to comply with seawall rules.

“To me it’s all about the beach,” Antolini said. “It’s absolutely all about the beach.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by the Environmental Funders Group of the Hawaii Community Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.