The Coubre lighthouse located at La Tremblade near Royan in Charente-Maritime, threatened by the advance of the ocean, will have to be demolished without being relocated, we learned on Monday from the Interregional Directorate of the South Sea Atlantic.
“We are in the projection, in the study of a possibility. Without a set timetable”, declared to AFP Christophe Mérit, deputy director of security and maritime controls of this branch of the Ministry of the Sea, confirming information from Littoral, a local weekly.
This white and red lighthouse, 64 meters high, which signals the approach of the Gironde estuary up to 52 kilometers offshore, was erected 1.8 kilometers from the ocean during its construction in 1904.
Today, the Atlantic is only 130 meters away and when this distance has been further reduced by half, the deconstruction of the building will be ordered because salt water infiltration will then undermine its foundations, explain the authorities. , rejecting the possibility of “rolling it back.”
According to Damien Joussemet, responsible for the Coubre lighthouse, four others in the town have been swept away by the waves since the 17th century as a result of erosion.
A natural phenomenon of sediment loss caused by winds, waves and tides, coastal erosion causes beaches and dunes to recede by several meters in places, each year, on the coastline.
-In the Tremblade sector, the coastline had notably retreated by 18 meters during the winter of 2020-2021 alone, according to records from the Observatory of the coast of Nouvelle-Aquitaine (Ocna), which brings together researchers from Bureau of Geological and Mining Research and the National Forestry Office.
According to estimates from the Littoral Public Interest Group, which brings together local authorities affected by erosion from Charente-Maritime to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, around 6,700 homes and businesses are threatened by this decline by 2050, if nothing. is not done.
In neighboring Gironde, the “Signal”, a residential building threatened with being swallowed by the ocean, was demolished in early 2023 on the beach of Soulac-sur-Mer.
Among other critical points in the region, a hotel and two villas at Biscarrosse in the Landes, where work to strengthen the dune is underway, and a coastal road on a Basque cliff at Urrugne, are most threatened by the erosion in the years to come, according to Ocna.
