Sacred Ganges water near Varanasi fails official bacteria limits
The Ganges is India’s holiest river and a lifeline for hundreds of millions in its basin. Yet near Varanasi, fecal coliform from human waste exceeds the government’s official limit by more than a hundredfold—threat and sacrament in one stream.
The 2,525-kilometre river, called the Padma in Bangladesh, rises in Uttarakhand’s western Himalayas. Hydrologists count the Alaknanda as its source because it is longer, while Hindu tradition honours the Bhagirathi; they meet at Devprayag to form the main stem. Six headstreams and their five Panch Prayag confluences are held sacred. After 256.9 km of Himalayan valley the river leaves the mountains at Rishikesh and reaches the plain at Haridwar, where canal works draw off water.
Arcing across the plain past Kanpur, it gains the Ramganga’s average of about 495 m³/s, then the 400 km Tamsa with roughly 187 m³/s and the 625 km Gomti. Other big tributaries include the Ghaghara, Gandaki, and Kosi from the north and the Yamuna, Son, and Damodar from the south. Its basin spans India, Nepal, China, and Bangladesh, from the Himalaya to the Vindhya slopes.
The name strictly covers the stretch from Devprayag to the first split near the Farakka Barrage, so lengths vary: measured along the Hooghly distributary from the Bhagirathi’s source, it runs about 2,704 km. Together with the Brahmaputra it builds the world’s largest delta, about 64,000 km² fronting 400 km of the Bay of Bengal, and the combined Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna flow is exceeded only by the Amazon and Congo. The plain beneath is a foreland basin, formed as the Indian plate drifted northeast from Gondwana beginning some 75 million years ago.
Capitals from Pataliputra to Dhaka rose on its banks, and hundreds of millions depend on it today. Yet near Varanasi fecal coliform bacteria from human waste run more than a hundred times above the official limit, endangering people and wildlife alike.
Source: Ganges
