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Bondvol Lake is a historic village water source in Santa Cruz, also known as Calapor, Goa. A 2016 visit by resident Arturo D’Souza, who found the lake dry, helped spark the Save Bondvol Lake movement. Residents, the Calapor comunidade, activists and academic experts then combined public organizing with legal action and ecological evidence to seek the lake’s protection. A January 2021 report said wetland notification was expected; the sources available here do not confirm that it was subsequently notified or establish the lake’s present physical condition.
What Bondvol Lake meant to the village
A January 2021 feature by Rashi Goel described Bondvol as a roughly 110-year-old natural reservoir built during Portuguese rule and a historic water source for Santa Cruz and its fields. Arturo D’Souza recalled its agricultural use: “The Bondvol waters were used for providing water to the fields.” The account also remembered the lake as a place of biodiversity and birdlife. Read Goel’s report in Scroll.in.
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How the campaign took shape
2016: a dry lake prompted action
D’Souza’s discovery that the lake was dry in 2016 raised concerns about human intervention and a proposed lake-view development. That observation helped prompt the Save Bondvol Lake movement. It connected a visible change in the landscape to a broader question: how could a village protect a waterbody with historical, ecological and agricultural significance?
2017: residents pursued protection through the courts
In 2017, D’Souza and the Calapor comunidade sought protection through the Bombay High Court’s Goa bench. The comunidade was described in the 2021 account as the official landholder. In Goa, comunidade lands are collectively held and cared for, giving the institution an important role in the campaign’s effort to protect the lake.
Public organizing widened participation
The campaign also used a special gram sabha, public meetings, rallies and marches to bring the issue into public view. Goel’s 2021 report said more than 3,000 people were involved in the movement and that a separate meeting at Azad Maidan in April 2018 drew over 4,000 attendees. These are figures reported in that feature, not independently audited counts.
Academic expertise strengthened the case
Environmental activists and academic voices contributed to the effort, including work to strengthen the hydrology and biodiversity aspects of the case. That technical input complemented community testimony and landholder involvement: it helped frame Bondvol not only as a place residents remembered, but as a waterbody whose ecological value could be made part of the protection argument.
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What the 2021 wetland report did—and did not—establish
In January 2021, Goa State Wetland Authority Member Secretary Pradip Sarmokadam was quoted as saying, “The process of identification of wetlands across the state has begun.” He also said, “We will be looking at 35 wetlands this year, Bondvol is part of the first 10 we have evaluated.” The feature reported that Bondvol was expected to receive wetland status. That was a report of an expectation at the time, not confirmation of a completed notification.
The Goa State Wetland Authority’s waterbody restoration page, last updated July 3, 2026, lists seven other restoration projects and does not list Bondvol. The page is not a legal register of wetland notifications, so its omission cannot establish Bondvol’s current legal status. Nor do the sources cited here establish whether the lake has physically been restored.
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Goa’s wider lake program is context, not proof of Bondvol’s status
A September 19, 2025 release from the Department of Information and Publicity, Government of Goa, said 39 lakes had been identified for rejuvenation, with ecological revival, beautification, community integration and sustainable management among the stated aims. It does not establish that Bondvol was among those lakes or that this program restored it. The release also said, “Besides Government efforts people shares the equal role in protecting and conserving water bodies.”
Bondvol’s documented story is therefore one of community mobilization, landholder participation, court petitions and ecological expertise brought together to seek protection. The later state-level program offers broader context for lake restoration in Goa, but the sources cited do not settle Bondvol’s present notification or restoration condition.
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