Blocking the sea

on july 31, an expert committee of the union ministry of environment and forest decided not to recommend the construction of rock structures designed to reclaim Puducherry's beaches from the sea. The committee has deferred its consent till there are proper studies on these structures--called groynes in engineering parlance. Puducherry's public works department has proposed the construction of groynes, but a group of activists from the union territory had petitioned the environment ministry against the proposal. Construction of hydraulic structures was an unscientific way of tackling coastal erosion, they contended.

Coastal erosion is a serious problem in Puducherry. But the beaches did not disappear overnight. The problem began in 1989, when a harbour was built at the southern tip of the union territory.Two breakwaters were constructed as a part of the harbour which stopped the littoral drift, the natural south to north movement of sand.

The country's eastern cost has a high littoral drift with an estimated 6 million cubic metres of sand moving south to north along the coast. The breakwaters in southern Puducherry meant that sand from the beaches of the state moved north but there was no sand to replenish it. So the area north of the breakwater lost all beaches.

Consulting Engineer Services, a New Delhi organization which designed the harbour, had anticipated this problem. It had incorporated a sand bypass system in the harbour's design to obviate sea erosion silt from the harbour would be dredged and artificially pumped to the other side, restoring the movement of sediments along the coast. Says M D Kudale, chief research officer of Central Water and Power Research Station (cwprs), " a sand bypass system was put in place but seldom used except for a brief period between 2000 and 2001, when small stretches of beach began to reappear. But the system was discarded in 2002, and the beaches disappeared once again."

Sand loss
By 2002, Northern Puducherry had lost all sand. Structures along the coast began to crumble as sea water intruded into their foundation. In 2002-2003, the state government decided to build a seven km long seawall consisting of boulders along the coast. Rs 40 crore were spent on the construction. While Puducherry was saved temporarily, the problem of erosion was transferred to villages in Tamil Nadu in the north.