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Holy man, secular plan: clean up the River Ganges

Veer Bhadra Mishra, a Hindu priest and former professor of hydraulics, has gained government approval for a pilot program.

from the July 22, 2008 edition

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"Man becomes pure by the touch of the water, or by consuming it, or by expressing its name," says Lord Vishnu in the Ramayana, a poem written in the fourth century BC.

But while India's Hindus have maintained their reverence for the river, modernization – in the form of speedy population growth, urbanization, and industrialization – has sullied it. There are more than 100 cities, numerous towns, and countless villages scattered along its banks. Some 500 million people are dependent upon the Ganges for water. As it has been siphoned off for irrigation, its water levels have fallen.

Climate change is also taking a disastrous toll. The Himalayan Gangotri glacier, the source of most of the Ganges' water during India's long, hot summers, is shrinking by 40 yards a year, say scientists. By 2030, they warn, it could disappear altogether – making the Ganges dependent upon erratic monsoon rains.

While environmentalists urge India, a top greenhouse-gas producer, to take action, Mishra says that an opportunity is being lost to tackle the much simpler problem of domestic sewage pollution.

Few of the fast-growing cities and towns along the Ganges' banks – indeed, few in India, period – have sewage treatment plants. But the problem is especially crucial in Varanasi, where millions of Hindus make annual pilgrimages to pray and ritually bathe on the broad stone steps that lead down to the river from the riverbank temples.

The World Health Organisation, which labels dirty water as the leading cause of child deaths in India, says the coliform bacteria count is some 3,000 times higher than it considers safe.

That hasn't stopped the pilgrims at its banks, however, who may be unaware of such concerns.

Small boys water bomb into the river beside pious elderly men dressed in loin cloths who pour water over their heads. Sari-clad women murmur prayers as they scatter fragrant rose and jasmine petals, seemingly oblivious to the small islands of reeking rubbish that float by.

India's government, however, has been aware of the problem for some time. Twenty years ago, it launched the Ganga Action Plan (GAP), a multimillion-dollar scheme intended to clean up the river by means of wastewater treatment plants.

Replacement for government plan?

A near-consensus among experts exists that GAP has been an expensive disaster. The plants handle only a small amount of the sewage generated along the river. Because they rely on electrical pumps during power cuts – frequent in India – even the small amount of sewage they're meant to handle often flows into the river. And, experts say, when the floodwaters rise, sewage enters the slump well of the pumps, stopping operations for months of the year.

Most seriously, the GAP system is designed to remove solid waste but not microorganisms. Mishra's scheme is different. His adaptation of an "advanced integrated wastewater pond system" (AIWPS) developed by Prof. William Oswald at Berkeley and in operation in parts of California, is, experts say, suitable for a tropical climate like India's.

Instead of depending on scarce supplies of electricity, the system would use gravity to carry sewage to four big pools, built on wasteland several miles outside the city, where it would be broken down by bacteria, algae, and sunlight.

An independent assessment found the plan was cheaper and more effective than the existing scheme. He hopes that his pilot project may one day become a model for other Indian towns and cities. But his inspiration remains the Ganges.

"All our rivers have stories," he says, as a wooden boat of pilgrims floats by his window, trailing flickering floating candles in the gathering dusk. "All our rivers are important. But there is nothing anywhere like the Ganga."

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