Pollution in the Ganges River occurs daily when civilians from all over come to bath in the most sacred river in India. Cremated bodies, sewage from factories, and occasionally a dead animal float around in the river on a daily basis. Because the river is known as a sacred healing body of water, people who have sicknesses and diseases bathe themselves hoping that it will cure them. Others who go into the polluted river do it because of tradition, especially Hindu priests.

 Over the years not much has been done to try to clean up the unsanitary Ganges River. The efforts that have been made have either made it worse or not even worked at all! The city of Varanasi, in India, has begun many groups to help clear up the river and make it clean to bath in once again.

             Veer Bhadra Misra, a head priest at the Sankat Mochan temple, founded the Sankat Mochan Foundation. The foundation gives awareness on the need to protect the Ganges River. The foundation had come up with a few ways to try to clean the river up. The plan involves a 4-mile pipeline to intercept all the sewage that would normally flow in to the Ganges from the Varanasi area. The pipeline would then extend another 4 miles to an elevated sandbar in the Ganges where a series of ponds would cleanse the waste using microorganisms to destroy the bacteria. The government has already spent about $33 million to build a plant that would help with the huge sewage problem. 

 The problem with this new idea of using a pipeline to clean the water is the fact that it used electric-powered pumps to pump the water through to clean it. When the power goes out, the town regained all the polluted water right back, and was even more than there was before! That idea was thrown out a couple of years after it was applied.

 Another attempt at cleaning the water has started a couple of years ago. The Ganga Action Plan (GAP) is in effect, and will be about a seven-year process. The first phase of this plan had failed, and the people hope that the second phase will be effective. The civilians are sure it will fail if elecric-powered pumps like the other clean-up ideas run it. 

 Hopefully over the upcoming years the awareness of the polluted Ganges River will increase. The more inventions thought up on how to clean the river the better, so that the people who consider the river sacred can at least bath in a river that is just as pure as its reputation.