As a child, 72-year-old K. Seethalakshmi, a resident of Mannady Street in Villivakkam, would play with her friends on the footsteps of a small pond, while her mother fetched water from the pond for domestic purposes.
Her mother was not the only one to benefit from the water body. This small pond near the Villivakkam railway station was once a major water source for hundreds of families in the neighbourhood.
But for a decade now, it has been resembling a dump yard with heaps of garbage thrown around on the bund.
“Like this pond here, several other small water bodies in the neighbourhood have vanished over the years due to lack of maintenance by the local body. With the water body turning unusable, miscreants and land grabbers are drawn to it,” said K. Shanmugam, a resident in Villivakkam.
The 15-feet deep pond, which is spread over an acre, is located at the centre of residential colonies. However, it does not have a steel fencing to protect children from slipping into it. The water body is not cleaned regularly either. With weed overgrowing on the surface, the pond has turned an eyesore. Residents have been requesting the authorities to de-silt and deepen the pond.
With fewer number of garbage bins in the neighbourhood, residents find it convenient to dump domestic wastes into the pond leading to its contamination.
Earlier, water from the pond was used to water trees in the neighbourhood but now the contaminated water cannot be used for the saplings. “The pond is the reason for most of the wells in the locality not going dry in the harsh summer. It helps recharge the ground water table,” said V. Saraswathi, a resident in Villivakkam.
For the past few years, residents have written repeatedly to the local body to clean the pond and renovate it so that residents can use the pond as they did decades earlier.
“We will take steps to clean and renovate the pond soon,” said a local body official.