Dozens of elderly residents of Greater Tainan’s Guanmiao District (關廟) yesterday rekindled youthful memories by participating in a river-trekking event to celebrate the successful restoration of Syusian Creek (許縣溪).
The senior citizens rolled up the legs of their pants for to wade in the water and later sang karaoke on a shoal next to the creek, while younger residents cooked noodles.
The creek is formed by the meeting of the upstream and midstream sections of Yanshuei River (鹽水溪) and the basin is about 41.3km across.
Singuang Community Development Association chief executive Wu Tsung-pao (吳宗寶) said that in the 1950s and 1960s, a planned bridge connecting both sides of the creek had not been built, so residents had to walk through the creek to obtain daily necessities, collect clean water, visit friends or work in the fields.
However, after the bridge was completed, followed shortly by the inauguration of a tap water system, the creek became much less integral to the residents’ lives, he said.
“The stream transformed into something of a nightmare after torrential rains caused flooding many times, and livestock excrement and waste dumped into the creek led to serious pollution,” Wu said.
Thanks to the association’s efforts over the past five years to remove waste along the waterway and its surroundings and to stop the dumping of waste, the ecology of the creek has gradually regenerated, he said.
With the addition of a stairway built next to local stores allowing easier to the creek, people now have easy access to the water once again, he said.
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