My name is Lukas Ley. So my water body doesn’t really have a name but it’s a small pond sort of on the side of a river called Anger in Germany.

So the pond would be in a city called Ratingen, which is close to Dusseldorf. It’s a small second tier city with a lot of forest still because it is outside of the industrial zones of Dusseldorf. So it is attached and I think it’s because the Anger was used to generate electricity. There was a small mill which was used until maybe the 50’s, and then a restaurant moved into the building which meant that the mill was slowly deteriorating and nobody was maintaining it anymore. So this small body of water, the pond, became more aesthetics. I think it was previously used to retain water. So when I lived in Ratingen I went running a lot along the Anger, this river, and I always passed this small pond. And it was changing visibly. It was becoming more and more land, it was very hypertrophied I guess because there’s agriculture around the Anger and products and minerals kind of seeped into the pond so that changed quite a bit.

We were very concerned by it because the restaurant, you know this kind of establishment, was not really taking care of it. And since it was becoming land, they actually decided to turn it into parking space so that was a strong concern for my family who were running and using that space for a long time. We were still opposing and I think some politicians were opposing turning it into more parking space because the adjacent forest is being protected.

Allowing that establishment to expand and turn previously appreciated water bodies into their own property was kind of a concern to some people. I think it started in 2006 when new owners came in to the restaurant in the mill space and probably had some good business ideas and turned the location into a very profitable restaurant therefore needing more parking space; but at the same time, not paying attention really what other uses existed of that space. Around that time my dad got really sick and couldn’t run anymore so I guess whenever I went running I made sure to kind of survey, observe the space to see if there were any more encroachment happening by the private business. I think we just called it duck pond.