Is there a future for some of Auroville’s beach communities?

A few weeks ago, announcements began appearing in the News and Notes inviting Aurovilians to weekend activities at the beach community of Repos. Aurovilians were welcomed to enjoy a talent show, photographic exhibition, beach volleyball and acupuncture, and invited to try the latest specialty from Repos’ Nice Kitchen, Fruits Mela.

What’s so unusual about this? you might ask. Well, one year ago Repos was in ruins, with the coastal fence and most of the houses destroyed by the invading sea [see Auroville Today # 280 and # 281, November and December 2012]. In fact, after an official announcement that Repos was closed and the main gate was locked, most Aurovilians thought the end was nigh for this formerly popular beach community.

Rejuvenating Repos

But a small group decided they were not going to give up so easily. G. Vasu, who continues to live in Repos, along with Boomi (Technica), Jayamoorthy (Ecoservice) and G. Vasu formed themselves into the Repos Beach Management Committee and began working on plans to protect and revive Repos. They were assisted by Jayanta Chakrabarty and his team. Jayant is the director of MultiDimension, a media company based in Paris. He first visited Repos in the 1990s.

“When I visited Pondy this year, I was told that the situation in Repos was bad, so I made a visit,” says Jayant. “I saw all this plastic lying around and ruined buildings; the whole place looked destitute, totally abandoned. I remembered how it used to be and I realized that if we didn’t do something, this place would disappear within one year. So I thought, ‘Let’s try and do something’.

“I’m involving myself because I have faith in this community and because I’m very hopeful. After all, in the beginning Auroville managed to create a forest out of a desert. Now we have to make a similar effort to save this beach. This is Auroville’s special gift, to give hope to people when everything seems to be falling apart.”

One part of the strategy is to revive the energy at Repos. The first task of the Repos Management Team and MultiDimension was to clean up Repos, which had become a dumpsite for the local village. Then they built a small kitchen – ‘Nice Kitchen’ – where they prepare simple meals. “This is the beginning of our project called food and culture,” says Jayant. “The plan is to do something special here every weekend. There will be beach volleyball, and next weekend we are organizing a children’s sandcastle-making and balloon-flying day. There will be music at night, and Tanto will provide the pizzas. Future plans include rebuilding some of the guest capsules and creating simple facilities for homeopathy and acupuncture consultations.”

This will all cost money. Where is it coming from? “At present,” says Jayant. “it is a self-financed project because Auroville asked us to do it like this. Auroville gave some initial funding and provided help with rebuilding the fencing and cleaning up, which we very much appreciate. But we would like to generate an independent fund for the revival of Repos Beach.”

But the main problem is the continued erosion caused by the waves. In September last year, Satprem and a team of volunteers used sand and rubble in bags (fixed on land with mesh) to try and protect Bhaga’s and Philippe and Sabine’s houses from the ravages of the sea. Both the bags and the houses fell into the sea and now no protection is in place. “This is why,” says Guy, “I keep telling the Repos team to keep things simple because without adequate erosion protection we don’t know if, in two months, Repos will still be here or not. August and September is always the time of greatest erosion in Repos.”

Jayant admits the seriousness of the situation. “At high tide the water comes right up to our fence,” says Jayant. “It only needs a strong wind and a big wave to take out almost everything that is left.”

Options for protection

So what is being planned to prevent further destruction? Jayant mentions that the Tamil Nadu Government has sanctioned a series of groynes in this area of the coast, but that an NGO, Coastal Action Network (CAN), has filed a court case and acquired a temporary injunction against them being constructed. Guy, one of the managers of Quiet Healing Center, which has also been seriously affected by erosion in the past, explains that these groynes are of a different design from the ones to the south which have caused so many problems. The new design is for a series of six and, instead of being at right angles to the coastline, they will reach out into the sea at an angle, tapering off in length as they go north. Such a design, it seems, would interfere less with the natural littoral drift while allowing protection against erosion.

The Auroville Foundation has impleaded in the ongoing court case, requesting that the construction of these groynes goes ahead, since “there is a lack of well-defined alternative solutions” and failure to complete the project will cause the situation to deteriorate even further.

The court involved, the National Green Tribunal, directed the Tamil Nadu Government to get environmental clearance for this scheme. The environmental clearance has now been given subject to certain conditions but, warns Guy, “the Tribunal may still keep the injunction as CAN has made several other objections to the scheme, including the environmentally-damaging aspect of groynes.”

Jayant is unenthusiastic about the groynes solution. He is interested in an alternative option, which he refers to vaguely as a submerged seawall. AuroFilio of PondyCAN clarifies. The Puducherry Government is looking at creating an artificial ‘reef’ using textile geotubes filled with sand to protect its coast. These tubes, which would be located on the sea floor 200 metres offshore, would prevent the larger waves breaking on the shore but smaller waves and sand would still be able to reach the beaches. They are not a complete panacea because a sand trap is created behind the reef, which is why Filio favours a hybrid approach that combines geotubes with artificial sand nourishment of the beaches.

Of course, such a solution, if adopted, would be in the sea off Puducherry , not off Tamil Nadu where Repos beach and other Auroville beach communities are located. And Filio admits that the geotubes experiment off Kovalam Beach in Kerala has been controversial. Some of the tubes have washed ashore, and the fishermen are not happy.

Before the last monsoon, another beach community, Quiet Healing Center, had been planning to erect a thick metal wall close to its fence, mainly to protect its reception and guest house area, at a total cost of about 20 lakhs. The wall would have been 80 metres long and the panels would have been sunk 5 metres deep into the sand, with one metre protruding above. “We even had the agreement of the fishermen, who had blocked the construction of a seawall in front of Quiet in the past,” says Guy. As an experiment, two panels were inserted close to the fence before the monsoon, and these are still in place. However, as the erosion seems to have stabilised for the moment, the Center decided to wait with the project, expecting the government to build groynes. “Also, we prefer to go by faith and hope that the erosion at Quiet has reached its peak,” says Guy.

Meanwhile the strategy of Jayant and the Repos Beach Management team is to alert as many people as possible to the gravity of the situation. The group wants to put on a film festival in Auroville next February, to publish a booklet and use the MultiDimension Facebook page to create an international campaign to save this stretch of beach.

The other threatened beach communities

Most Aurovilians would be surprised to learn that there are 11 Auroville beach communities, as well as other Auroville land in coastal villages. Not all of these communities are at present under threat from the sea. So far, Eternity and Sri Ma have not experienced serious erosion. The most affected communities are Waves, Repos, Fortuna, Gokulam, Mirra Youth Camp and Quiet.

In fact, the news from Quiet, for once, is good. Guy points out that last year, for the first time in five years, there was no erosion of their beachfront land. Before then, the beach had been disappearing at the rate of 20 metres a year. Why has the erosion stopped? One theory is that it was because of a particularly mild monsoon last year (the biggest erosion in Quiet takes place during the monsoon season). Another possibility is that the erosion has reached its natural limit. Guy shrugs: “Nobody knows.”

The adjacent beach communities have not been so fortunate. Houses and land have been lost to the sea not only in Repos but also in Fortuna, Waves and Gokulam. Today, nobody (apart from Tanya in Waves) is living in the latter three communities, none of which has any adequate protection against the waves. “In all, seven homes have been destroyed so far in our beach communities due to erosion,” says Joseba of the Housing Service. “Most of the people affected have been rehoused in Newcomer accommodation in Djaima.”

Mirra Youth Camp, which is adjacent to Gokulam, is also deserted at present except for a solitary amma who looks after the place. The community kitchen and one or two capsules are perilously close to the sea. The border is unprotected from the sea except for the remnants of some sand-filled tubes.

Altogether it is a depressing sight. Guy points out that the volunteers who had lived here had made real efforts to combat the erosion. However, Donata, who lives in the neighbouring community, Samarpan, believes that a community under threat from the sea is not the right place for volunteers. “We need a permanent presence here, people whom the local villagers respect.”

Donata herself is well-respected in the village, which is why she has so far managed to prevent encroachments and the dumping of village garbage in Gokulam and Mirra Youth Camp. But it’s a daily battle. “It makes no sense,” says Donata. “When a villager purchases a piece of land the first thing he does is put a big wall around it. But these pieces of Auroville land are not fully fenced: at present, anybody can walk in at any time. What kind of message are we sending?”

What should be done?

Auroville has given some assistance to the beach communities – Land Service has helped erect fences in Repos and Gokulam and recently Matrimandir workers helped clean up Gokulam – but Auroville is not willing to put much money into these beach communities as long as there is not adequate protection from the waves. And the only major protection initiative is blocked in the courts at present. But without protection, valuable beach land continues to disappear into the sea or is threatened by encroachment. This is the crux of the problem.

Some people suggest we should simply sell this land or exchange it for village land in the city centre or greenbelt. But while beach land is generally very valuable, who would be willing to buy or exchange land threatened by the sea? And we are not talking of losing just centimetres and inches. “I’ve lived by the beach for seven years now,” says Donata, “and I’ve seen 30 metres of beach lost to erosion in just one month.” Donata is fortunate: a seawall erected by the government some time ago to protect a neighbouring village also protects Samarpan against the waves.

So what is the solution? The present approach of doing nothing seems the worst option. This way, not only will Auroville continue to lose land but whatever is left will plummet in value. Moreover, these desolate beachside communities give a very bad impression of Auroville and what we stand for.

None of the ‘soft’ protective measures tried in the past – like tyres in the sea (at Quiet) and bags filled with sand (at Repos and Mirra Youth Camp) – have been successful. But why not continue the Quiet experiment and put a metal fence against the sea in our most vulnerable beach communities? It will cost perhaps a couple of crores and may not last forever. But, in the meantime, the court may free up a more effective protection option and, anyway, we are probably losing at least two crores worth of land to the sea annually through doing nothing.

The question is, are we willing to put money and energy into protecting our beach communities? Or shall we simply let them slip under the waves because it is too much trouble, too expensive, and, being outside the magic circles of the town and greenbelt, perhaps regarded by some as not being ‘really Auroville’?