They use sea erosion to line their pockets

This year the south-west monsoon has come three days earlier than the weathermen had predicted, providing much-needed relief to coastal residents from a sweltering heat wave. But for those who transport boulders to the beaches, ostensibly to prevent sea erosion, it is bonanza time.

They have been doing this for the past 26 years with government sanction, but it has not stopped the sea erosion. On the other hand, this exercise has eroded millions of rupees from the state exchequer. Each six tonne boulder on a truck costs Rs30,000.

Experts say the coast is full of spots that are prone to seasonal beach erosion, “It is a simple process of churning of the sea. The sea for some reason shifts dunes of sand from one place to another during the monsoons and returns the same volume in the next year to the same spot. So the volume of sand lost this year returns to the same spot next year and it need not cause any alarm,” say the experts of marine geology department of Mangalore University.

According to a study by NEERI (National Environmental Engineering Research Institute) there are 27 points on the coastal areas of Karnataka that are erosion prone. But they were just natural spots where sea, wind and sand were engaged in this churning. Beaches play an important role as natural buffers between the ocean and land. They protect coastal property from intense wave action.

This was one of the reason why the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification was introduced in 1972. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had asked all developmental lobbies to lay their hands off the coastal areas through the CRZ notification. But some politicians have been allegedly working hand in glove with the lobbies that dump precious mineral resources into the sea at a stupendous cost.

There are different lobbies working under the pretext of ‘protecting the coast’. Some of them have made a career out of dumping boulders on the sea coast, while some others have tried to find more alien ‘solutions’, again at taxpayer’s cost. Groups of MLAs, MPs and officials have visited countries such as France, New Zealand and Australia and come up with solutions that will never work in Indian conditions.

A former minister for minor irrigation had even come up with the idea to float a huge ‘net’ made after tying thousands of used tyres. He happened to see it in some country and there are also some other lobbies who want a huge wall constructed between the sea and the human habitat along the coastline.

Officials at the ports and minor irrigation department say the dumping of boulders has been a ‘temporary measure’, but it has lasted for more than 25 years and contractors have made a fortune out of it. Some of the glaring instances were found in Kotepura in Ullal (Mangalore constituency) Padukere (Udupi constituency) Kodi and Maravanthe (in Kundapur constituency). In all these places, except Maravanthe, the boulders have vanished into the sea.

“These people are making huge sums of money every year by dumping several thousand tonnes of boulders on the beach at the beginning of the monsoons and by the end of it, all of them would have vanished into the sea. Next year the same exercise happens,” said Habib Rehman of Kotepura village in Ullal.

This drama has been continuing for too long, say fishermen. “It is all being done in the name of protecting the dwellings of fishermen, those people who try to build houses nearer to the beaches were not fishermen, but touts and persons close to politicians. Fishermen respect the sea and its strength and will live at a respectable distance from the shore,” said fisherman Praveen Karkera of Kaiko village in Ullal.

Local residents said each year the government dumped not less than 3,000 truck-loads of boulders, and one can imagine the money involved in this activity.