If you’ve ever tackled spring cleaning of your house, you’ll know that tidying up a home can be a mountain of a job. Cleaning up an entire river, however, seems to be a far more challenging task.
India’s Ganges River, or Mother Ganga, as the locals refer to it, has become a liquid landfill. The once-beautiful waterway has become a dumping ground for human and animal corpses … it is thought that the soul will be saved and then go to heaven. Corpses are not the only things floating down the river; there are also ample chemical and human wastes.
The bacteria being carried along in the water is not only killing the river, it is also killing India’s residents, who continue to rely on The Ganges River for much-needed drinking, cooking and bathing water. Locals have remained true to the beliefs that this river is sacred; however, an influx in the country’s population dumping their waste into the water has become far more than the river can bear. Since the 1990’s, the amount of domestic sewage discarded has doubled. The river, referred to as “The Source of Life” could be better coined as “The Source of Death”.
The ever-growing problems associated with The Ganges River have been recognized and attempts have been made to clean up the river. One idea floated was to build a pipeline to, essentially, intercept the sewage and carry it to a sewage plant for more proper treatment and disposal. Waste would be carried through the pipeline using electric pumps. Locals quickly realized that electric power was not reliable … in the case of a power outage, the waste would simply return to where it came from. Another initiative was the Ganga Action Plan, created to create further awareness and reduce the further careless disposing of waste.
Has cleaning The Ganges River become an insurmountable job? Time will tell. One thing is for certain, this cleaning job requires far more than a stiff broom and a good sponge.
