“We don't really have a choice, the sea takes over,” says Fanch Renevot, in front of the truck where the furniture of his white pavilion is piled up, a stone's throw from the beach, purchased in 2015, with a view to spend his retirement there. “Six months after we bought it, it went into the red zone,” he says, referring to the classification as a “very high hazard” of marine submersion of this hamlet in the small town of Treffiagat-Léchiagat, on the south coast of Finistère. “Not sentimental on stone”, the 60-year-old roofer does not say he is particularly affected by the sale of this second home. “My wife, it disturbed her a little more: it’s paradise here, all the same,” he confides, scanning the few houses set among the dunes and pines.
Built in a low-lying area in the 1970s and 1980s, these homes are separated from the beach by a simple dune which has gradually become thinner over the years. Backfilled before winter, it threatens to give in to the onslaught of the sea with each storm. In November 2023, in anticipation of the passage of storm Ciaran, around twenty houses were evacuated by prefectural decree.
“A bandage on a wooden leg”
“All the containment systems that we have been able to implement over the past 15-20 years, namely the dike, riprap, piles, are not effective”, lists Stéphane Le Doaré, president (LR) of the Pays Bigouden Sud Community of Communes (CCPBS). Each year, the community must pay “more than 100,000 euros” to reinforce the dune, reinforcing it with thousands of cubic meters of sand. “It’s a bottomless pit, a bandage on a wooden leg, because the sea is stronger than us,” emphasizes Stéphane Le Doaré. “We cannot sustainably guarantee that the residents behind the dune will be able to live in safety,” he explains. The models prove that, inexorably, the sea will enter this place. »
The CCPBS therefore undertook to buy seven houses to destroy them, then fifteen, in total, in the longer term. The purchase of the first two houses was recorded at the beginning of December, in community council. At the end of the process, the hamlet will be returned to nature. And the construction of a dike, behind the dune, is planned to protect the remaining homes.
“I will leave with the sea”
But the prospect of having to leave this popular seaside does not delight local residents. “It’s heartbreaking for everyone,” says a woman, without wanting to give her name. “It’s ruining our retirement,” insists a couple in their seventies, at the door of their house. “I will leave with the sea”, Denise even proclaims
from her kitchen window. The octogenarian, who has lived in the neighborhood since he was four years old, cannot imagine moving. “When the sea has come all the way, I will be obliged to go up to the attic and have someone come and get me,” she said.
The activation of state aid from the “Barnier fund” enabled the CCPBS to offer advantageous buyout conditions, at the market price (i.e. from 280,000 to 687,000 euros) for the first seven houses. “Correct” estimates, confirms Fanch Renevot.
But the financial aspect struggles to convince residents who are most attached to their residence. “I understand the psychological trauma for certain families who have lived there since the 1970s and raised their children there,” sympathizes Stéphane Le Doaré. “They will end up hearing it, it’s just time for acceptability,” the elected official wants to believe.
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