riverside towns, with some mayors telling her their villages spent 10 months out of 12 underwater.
"We want to move but we don’t have the means. No authority has come to see us since the damage," says Abibatou Fall, another Goxu Mbath resident.
In 2003, heavy rain in the drainage basin of the Senegal River alarmed the authorities who, fearing flooding, dug a new channel for the river water across the Langue de Barbarie.
As the sea flooded into the river mouth the canal widened, from four metres at the outset to a gaping breach that is five kilometres wide today.
"The forecasts are pessimistic for the Langue de Barbarie," says Balla Gueye, the city official in charge of the environment.
"The whole coast of St Louis is threatened," he said, adding that the city council had called on the state for help.
By way of response, the government recently announced a breakwater construction project that will cost one billion CFA francs.
The island community of Doune Baba Dieye, situated about ten minutes by motorised canoe from the mouth of the river, was the first casualty in St Louis.
"The water has engulfed the island and the people are gone," said the former village chief, Ameth Sene Diagne.
Diagne and his 800 neighbours had made their living from the precious mullet, sardines, bonga and tilapia that once thrived in the mangroves but disappeared after the salt water of the Atlantic began encroaching into the river.
Diagne, a father of 16 children from two wives, was the last to flee when the sea claimed his village in 2012.
"All this is due to the breach," says Diagne, one of the lucky ones who had enough money to build a new house further inland.
"We do not want it but in this country when you do not have a university degree, no one listens to you."
The nearby village of Keur Bernard was also deserted and others including Pilote Barre are threatened with extinction, according to experts. The breach has also cost lives.