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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Villagers move to stop beach erosion at Granville

by

Radhica De Silva
2365 days ago
20190122
Sunil Sookram, from Granville Village, stands on a retaining wall which residents built using their own funds at Granville Beach, Cedros, because of coastal erosion.

Sunil Sookram, from Granville Village, stands on a retaining wall which residents built using their own funds at Granville Beach, Cedros, because of coastal erosion.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Vil­lagers of Ce­dros are pool­ing re­sources to­geth­er to con­struct re­tain­ing walls along the bat­tered south­west penin­su­la to save the coast­line from fur­ther ero­sion.

Al­ready more than 100 acres of pri­vate land at Granville has been swal­lowed by the sea, along with sev­er­al homes, pub­lic roads and pri­vate es­tates.

A build­ing con­struct­ed by the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion in 2016 stands about 50 feet from the shore­line near Granville Beach and each day the sea draws clos­er.

In an in­ter­view coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros, Shankar Teelucks­ingh said he planned to lob­by the Min­istry of Works, Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and seek mon­ey from the Green Fund to get re­sources to save the coast­line.

He said four years ago, a re­tain­ing wall was built as part of a self-help project which worked well in pre­vent­ing ero­sion.

Now that the wash­room fa­cil­i­ties and carpark are in dan­ger, Teelucks­ingh is re­new­ing his plea for the Gov­ern­ment to do restora­tive works im­me­di­ate­ly.

“If work does not com­mence soon, we will lose the land, just like what hap­pened in Quinam. So far, we have not seen any mean­ing­ful work done by the min­istry. At the Bam­boo land­slip in which three homes were de­stroyed, the Coastal Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) did no restora­tive work,” Teelucks­ingh said.

He said some res­i­dents, through their vil­lage coun­cils, have raised funds to do small projects to save the beach­es. “The beach­es are the main form of in­come for many res­i­dents who de­pend on lo­cal and for­eign tourism. Res­i­dents would have tried the rec­om­men­da­tion from in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal agen­cies to save their prop­er­ties,” Teelucks­ingh said.

He said res­i­dents have not re­ceived any com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of their prop­er­ty.

“We are call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to use the sim­ple low-cost rec­om­men­da­tions so we can save our coast­line to fa­cil­i­tate tourism projects,” Teelucks­ingh said.

In a re­port sub­mit­ted by the Coastal Pro­tec­tion Unit in 2016, it was rec­om­mend­ed that a sloped and stepped Gabion Bas­ket revet­ment be done to pro­tect the area where the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion fa­cil­i­ty was built.

An of­fi­cial from the Min­istry of Works said that the CPU team will be vis­it­ing the Ce­dros area to as­sess the con­tin­ued ero­sion.


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