Hindu Priest Seeks to Lead Cleanup of Sacred but Polluted Ganges River

Every day, about 60,000 people bathe in India’s holiest river at its holiest city, their souls soaring in prayer to the rising sun, confident they will emerge pure and renewed.

Veer Bhadra Misra, the “mahant” or head priest at Varanasi’s centuries-old Sankat Mochan temple, shares their faith in the Ganges River’s powers of redemption.

But as a hydraulic engineer, Misra also is very aware that the river is dangerously polluted with the tons of sewage poured into it every day by the very same Indians who worship it.

The 59-year-old Misra has lived on the banks of the Ganges for decades, worshiping and studying it. Now he hopes to lead a river cleanup using his dual strengths--as the eighth generation of his family to head the prominent Hindu temple and as a scientist.

He wants to try his hand where the Indian government failed. The government launched a huge, technology-heavy sewage treatment project along the Ganges in 1986 that failed dismally in reaching a goal of cleaning up the river by 1993.

Local authorities looking for more effective ways to cleanse the river appear to be leaning toward the plan developed by Misra with help from American experts. It would rely on microbes and simple technology to treat the area’s sewage.

Pollutants would still flow into the Ganges above and below Varanasi, but Misra said he is focusing on this area now because attempting to clean up the entire river with a single project is too daunting a task.

Hundreds of millions of Hindus worldwide revere the Ganges, which emerges from a Himalayan glacier in northern India and flows through the heart of the country into the Bay of Bengal 1,646 miles away. The river has been the crucible of more than 2,000 years of civilization.

Varanasi, 480 miles east of the river’s Himalayan source, is one of India’s oldest and holiest cities, believed to date back 3,000 years.

For centuries, Hindus have flocked to Varanasi in the belief that dying here frees the soul of sin and ends the cycle of life, death and rebirth--Hinduism’s interpretation of salvation.

Every day, hundreds of people arrive to spend their final days. Dozens of corpses are cremated along its banks, a sure path direct to heaven, pious Hindus say.

Amarnath, a pilgrim taking one of five daily ritual dips at a recent sunrise, ignored the refuse bobbing around him--rotting flowers, ashes of freshly cremated bodies and raw sewage.

“The river is pure. Germs cannot survive in its waters,” he said.

Misra said such popular notions give Indians an excuse to abuse the Ganges.

Misra too bathes daily in the Ganges, saying that he cannot give up an intrinsic part of his Hindu upbringing. But he admits to its ill effects and says he has a recurring problem of diarrhea.

In the last few decades, pollution in the Ganges has reached extreme levels. In some places in Varanasi it is estimated that the concentration of pollutants is 340,000 times the permissible level, exposing those who bathe in it to an alarming number of diseases.

Varanasi is one of 114 cities that dump sewage in the Ganges. More than 500 million people live along its banks.

In the four-mile stretch along the Varanasi Ghats, or steps where pious Hindus bathe, there are 12 large and small drains spewing untreated or partially treated sewage into the river. Occasionally a dead cow or a partially cremated human body part can be seen floating by.

“This is so painful. Something must be done,” Misra said.

At the back of his home is a modern laboratory where he conducts tests to study the river’s increasing pollution. Nearby is the Sankat Mochan temple where he performs religious rituals twice a day for thousands of worshipers.

Misra set up the Sankat Mochan Foundation 15 years ago in an effort to use his stature as a religious leader to kindle wider awareness of the need to protect the Ganges. It has ties with several international groups, including the San Francisco-based Friends of the Ganges and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.

If Misra’s cleanup plan is approved, it would be the foundation’s first large project.

In drawing up the plan, Misra worked with William Oswald, a professor emeritus of engineering at UC Berkeley, who has devised nonmechanized sewage treatment plants around the world.

Their method is simple. It involves laying a four-mile pipeline to intercept all the sewage that would normally flow into the Ganges from the Varanasi area. The pipeline would extend another four miles to an elevated sandbar in the Ganges where a linked series of ponds would cleanse the waste using microorganisms to destroy harmful bacteria.

The pipeline would use gravity to keep the waste flowing, rather than relying on electricity-driven pumps as the government’s treatment system does.

Ten years ago, the government spent $33 million to build an elaborate sewage plant near Varanasi to tackle the area’s Ganges pollution.

Five pumps treat effluent and then pour it into the river. But during frequent power outages, the pumps shut down and untreated sewage flows into the Ganges. The flow cannot be halted because that would cause a backflow of sewage into the city’s roads and homes.

Treatment plants also were built at 26 other major cities and towns along the Ganges as part of the $335-million Ganges Action Plan. But none of the plants has worked properly, says M.C. Mehta, a lawyer and environmental activist.

The “treated” water flowing from the Varanasi-area plant doesn’t look much cleaner than the sewage going in. Villagers around the plant say its outflow contaminates ground water and causes health problems.

‘The plant, which was supposed to clean the water, has become a hazardous polluting industry,” Mehta said. “The money of this nation is being wasted, and there is no accountability.”

Varanasi’s mayor, Saroj Singh, is studying Misra’s proposal as well as one from the national government’s Water Commission, which proposes to use the same technology it used in the 1986 project.

In an interview, Singh appeared inclined to allow Misra a chance since the Water Commission has already tried.

“It is common knowledge that the Ganges Action Plan has failed,” Singh said. “It seems his plan will be successful.”

Engineers at the Water Commission contend that their earlier work was partly successful and say the second phase would make the river safe for bathing.