Severe beach erosion at Sri Ma community

When hard structures like piers or groynes are built extending into the sea they block the natural movement of sand. As a result, sand piles up at one side of the structure, while the opposite side loses sand and begins to erode. According to an article in The Hindu newspaper of August 4th, 2024, the National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR) has reported that 42.7% of Tamil Nadu’s coastline is facing erosion, exacerbated by hard structures such as groynes, jetties and piers, with the number of these structures increasing since 2022. But studies have shown that groynes are ineffective and just move the erosion northwards.

Pondicherry too has been suffering from beach erosion, ever since a pier was constructed in 1989 to facilitate its harbour entrance. This led to sand accumulation on the south side and to the complete erosion of Pondicherry’s beaches to the north. In 2017, a beach nourishment project was taken up by the Pondicherry Government along with the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), which successfully restored some of the beachfront of the Promenade.

This, however, did not solve the problems that the pier’s construction brought to Tamil Nadu villages north of Pondicherry. They experienced beach and land erosion, with land and houses disappearing into the sea. In order to protect these villages, the Tamil Nadu government has since been building a number of groynes, but each groyne moved the erosion further northward. The one solution that did work for a specific locality was creating a seawall, a wall built in the sea parallel to the coast, which benefited the Auroville community Samarpan.

The Auroville beach communities

Once upon a time, Auroville had ten beach communities. Now there are only eight left. The most southern ones, about six kilometres north of Pondicherry, are Quiet (home to the Quiet Healing Center), Samarpan, Samutra and Gokulam. These communities suffered badly from beach erosion, losing at least 50 metres of their beachfront land, with the beaches completely disappearing or being vastly reduced in size. Efforts to protect these communities from further erosion have largely failed. In 2019, with the help of a 13 lakhs private donation, Quiet built a wall of sand bags to protect its land and buildings, but this gradually disappeared in the following two years. Yet, these communities continue to exist, thanks to a seawall and a groyne.

The communities of Repos and Waves, further north, were not so lucky. Google maps still refer to the beach bordering these communities as ‘Auroville Beach’, but in fact, that beach no longer exists. Nor do these communities, their houses, the teashop and the bathing facilities created for the many Aurovilians who went for a swim on lazy Sundays. The land and buildings have been swallowed by the sea.

Further north are Varuna Beach, the location of Auroville’s future desalination plant, and its neighbour Simplicity. They escaped beach erosion as they are protected by a groyne that was added to the existing groyne field by the Government shortly after Varuna finished building its own fortification within its compound: a wall of about two metres deep and six metres wide at the base. This wall was never tested.

About 5km north of Auroville is the town of Kalapet, an enclave of the Union Territory of Puducherry. Situated on the coast, it is fully surrounded by Tamil Nadu. It was annexed by the French in 1703 and has been a part of the Union Territory ever since. Pondicherry University and the Puducherry Technological University are located here, as is the Auroville beach community of Sri Ma. Until last year, it was not affected by beach erosion, but in August this year erosion started.

Sheril runs Sri Ma’s extensive guest resort. She and her husband, Daniel, are badly affected by the erosion. “The Tamil Nadu government has been building groynes from the northern border of the city of Pondicherry to the Kalapet enclave. One of them caused a lot of damage to a coastal village. The fishermen lost their beach, which was necessary for berthing their boats, and many houses and land were destroyed. They protested by blocking the East Coast highway for some hours. The government took notice and, in January this year, built another groyne at a distance of 500 metres from the border with Kalapet. That groyne is now causing us misery. Two months ago, the sea was a hundred meters from our fence and there was a lovely beach. Today the beach has gone, the sea has swallowed large acres of Sri Ma, and our house is on the verge of collapse. There's going to be immense erosion in the months of August and September. We have called for help from Aurovilians, and quite a few turned up to help put lining material, which was a leftover from the Matrimandir Lake construction, over the eroded land. That has helped to some extent, but it won’t be permanent.”

The solution is either building a new groyne north of Sri Ma, or creating a sea wall as has been done near Samarpan. “We’ve heard that the Government of Puducherry has been talking about building groynes to protect this enclave and its three villages, but we do not know if this is now a firm decision and if so, when it will be done. We are afraid it might come too late,” says Sheril. “This is an emergency because the sea isn't waiting. Measures have to be taken now, otherwise Auroville will lose half of Sri Ma if not more, and with that, the large contributions this community has been making to Auroville from the income generated by the resort and its Tanto restaurant.”

Good news might be in the offing. On August 19th Auroville learned that Dr. Ramana Murthy, the Director of the National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR), and his team visited Sri Ma and inspected the land loss and the severely eroded beach. They concluded that to stop any further loss of land, a stone wall needs to be immediately constructed along the eroded stretch of the shoreline, for which NCCR will send the design. Later on, this stretch can be integrated with the Shoreline Management Plan made by the NCCR for the entire Tamil Nadu coast. The North East monsoon will begin in a month’s time so it is expected that then there will be sand accumulation on the beach, which will then bring some relief. The funding of the wall, said Dr. Ramana Murthy, has to be organised by the Auroville Foundation or the Government of Pondicherry. As funding for the wall had not been secured by the time this issue went to the press, more loss of Sri Ma land may be expected in the month to come.

But what about the lost communities of Repos and Waves? Is there any hope for reviving them? Vasu, who lives in a tiny left-over area of Repos, believes there is. “The Government of Tamil Nadu wants to build a few groynes in this area,” he says. “When that happens, land accretion will occur and Repos and Waves will come back into existence.” Too good to be true? “Wait till the beginning of next year,” he says confidently. “Then this work is sure to start.”