A team of experts from the National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR) is expected to visit Puducherry on June 19 to inspect the erosion reported on the southern side of the Beach Promenade.
Official sources said the Department of Science, Technology, and Environment of the Puducherry Government had requested NCCR to inspect erosion on the southern side of the Promenade near the Dupleix statue. Though the erosion of the beaches to the north of Puducherry is not new, this is for the first time that erosion has been reported on the southern side after the beach nourishment project.
“A portion of the beachfront that had extended in size on the southern side thanks to the beach nourishment project recommended by NCCR had eroded causing concern. This was just the beginning, and the Department has sought their help to address the issue,” an official said.
The beach nourishment project envisages laying pipelines in the sea to collect and dump 5.10 lakh cubic tonnes of sand to fill eroded stretches of the beach in Puducherry.
A senior official in NCCR said the team will be inspecting the status of the beach nourishment project. “We also have planned to study the beach profiling at a few stretches on the coastline to ascertain the reasons for sea erosion. The study aims at understanding various dynamic aspects of the coast and coastal morphological data including sea level rise, currents, and circulation. The NCCR will be compiling a report on its findings and submitting its recommendations to the government, he said.
A report by NCCR said around 57% of Puducherry’s coast was eroding. Puducherry is second only to West Bengal, which recorded erosion at 63.5% followed by Kerala at 45% and Tamil Nadu at 41%. The report shows that a long-term cumulative analysis of the coast from 1990 to 2016, indicates that 57% of the coast has eroded, 35% is stable and only 8% is accreting (growing).
Artificial structures play a major role in promoting erosion along coasts. Coastal hamlets to the north of the harbour, including Kalapet, face consistent erosion, according to the report.
The steady erosion of Puducherry’s coastline, which originally extended almost 100 metres into the sea, is believed to have begun with the establishment of the fishing harbour in 1989, say environmentalists.
The problem started in 1989 when the Puducherry government constructed two breakwaters. The construction of the harbour, with its wall projecting into the sea, blocked the movement of sand from the south towards the north. Though a sand bypassing system was provided at the harbour to regularly shift the sand from north to south, this has not been done, resulting in erosion along the northern side, an official said.
Now, however, the beachfront on the Promenade has extended in size more than a year after the Port Department launched a beach nourishment project recommended by the NCCR. The successful deployment of an artificial reef made of steel caisson (submerged structure) funded by the Ministry of Earth Sciences and implemented by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) and lowered into the sea opposite to the Chief Secretariat in 2018, helped in reducing wave activity and allowed sand to freely move towards the north to prevent erosion along the coastline.
