Nepal’s holy Bagmati river choked with sewage and garbage

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — High on a Himalayan mountain, pristine drops fall from the mouth of a tiger statue perched on a stream believed to form the headwaters of the Bagmati River, long revered as having the power to purify souls. From there, it winds its way downhill past verdant forests and merges with other waterways, irrigating fields of rice, vegetables and other crops that are the livelihood of many Nepalis.

But when the Bagmati reaches the Kathmandu valley, the capital, its color changes from clear to brown to black, full of debris, its contents undrinkable and unsuitable even for cleaning. During the dry season, an overwhelming stench invades the riverbank area.

Polluted by garbage and raw sewage that is dumped directly into the waterway, Nepal’s holiest river has deteriorated so much that today it is also the most polluted in the country, drastically altering the way the city of Some 3 million interact with the Bagmati on a daily basis, culturally and spiritually. levels

In the capital, Bagmati mud oozes past several holy sites, including Pashupatinath Temple, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. The sprawling complex comprises a gold-roofed main temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, surrounded by hundreds of smaller temples. some.

Hindus flock to the riverbanks in Kathmandu to worship at shrines and celebrate festivals. Women plunge into the river to wash away sins during Rishipanchami, a day of worship to the seven sages revered as enlightened beings who guide humanity through the centuries. Visitors also enter during the Chhath festival, praying to the sun god Surya. During Teej, married women come to pray for the health and prosperity of their husbands, and single women to seek a good one.

Families have long brought the bodies of deceased loved ones to these shores to wash the feet of the dead on a stone slab and spray their faces with river water. Beliefs hold that it washes away a person’s sins and sends his soul to heaven before his physical remains are cremated on woodpiles, also by the river, and his ashes scattered in the waters.

People still bring their deceased loved ones to the Bagmati, but many no longer dare to have any contact with its contents. While the bodies are still cremated here, they are cleaned with purified water purchased from nearby stores.

“That no longer exists. The water is very dirty and stinks. People are forced to bring bottled water and do the rituals,” said Mithu Lama, 59, who has been working with her husband in the Teku ghat cremation grounds since she married him at 15, said recently while stacking firewood for a funeral pyre.

Bereaved families who turn to bottled water are often reluctant to discuss it openly, not having followed sacred burial tradition.

People have also traditionally collected river water to sprinkle their homes to purify them. The river is also important to Buddhists, many of whom cremate bodies on the banks of the Bagmati.

Born and raised alongside Bagmati, Lama remembers using its waters for cooking, bathing, washing and even drinking. Today that feels like a long-ago dream thwarted by decades of dumping human waste and debris, and he doesn’t expect to see it again anytime soon.

“Now I have serious doubts that it will be cleaned in my lifetime,” Lama said. “It is not that there has been no effort, there have been several cleanup campaigns, but there are more people dirtying it. People are the problem.”

In fact, there have been efforts by both government and private volunteers to clean up the river. Among those initiatives, every Saturday for the past seven years, hundreds of volunteers have gathered in Kathmandu to collect litter and take out Bagmati’s rubbish.

There, almost every weekend, is Mala Kharel, an executive member of the High Power Government Committee for the Integrated Development of the Bagmati Civilization, which was set up to help clean up the river. She volunteers her time not only for cleanup tasks, but also to raise awareness among the population on how to avoid contamination.

Kharel said that over the years, the campaign has managed to collect around 80% of the garbage along the riverbank, recovering all kinds of decomposing animal waste and even, surprisingly, the bodies of dead babies. thrown there. But it’s true that collection efforts fall short, in part because frequent interruptions in garbage collection services encourage more dumping than they can handle.

In addition, many thousands of people have illegally built shacks, shacks and brick houses along the river and refuse to leave.

Regarding sewage, according to Kharel, the committee is working on various projects, including the construction of canals and pipelines, built parallel to the river, to connect to sewer lines and prevent its waste from reaching Bagmati. It is also considering a treatment plant and is working on upstream dams where rainwater can be captured and stored during the monsoon season and released during the dry months to discharge into the river, carrying the waste downstream from Kathmandu.

Work on the pipe and canal system began around 2013, but no completion date has been announced. The construction of two dams is underway but is said to be nearing completion, while another remains in the process of being started. But activists have high hopes for the short term.

“In the next 10 years, I hope the river will flow clean and the banks will be clean and lined with trees,” Kharel said. “We are working hard towards this goal.”

That optimism is not shared by everyone. Some environmentalists aren’t sure that dams, for example, are much help.

“There are too many expectations of these dams. Bagmati is a natural river and not a channel that can be cleaned so easily,” said Madhukar Upadhya, a watershed expert who studies the river closely and said its bed is no longer sandy.

Instead, today it is lined with clay and mixed with chemicals thrown out by industrial activity, such as the hand-woven rug makers popular in the 1990s but now banned in the capital.

“So much damage has already been done to it,” said Upadhya, “that it may perhaps be cleansed to some extent, but not restored to its former glory.”

Hindu priest Pandit Shivahari Subedi, who has spent three decades on the stone steps between Bagmati and Pashupatinath Temple performing rituals for devotees, takes a similarly negative view of the various cleanup campaigns he has seen. He believes divine intervention is needed.

“There have been too many guarantees from political leaders and high-level people, but not all of them have been fulfilled. … It seems that unless the gods create some kind of miracle, Bagmati will not return to the glory of him,” Subedi said. “In order to clean the water naturally, by the grace of God, there needs to be a great flood of water to wash away the dirt.”

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Associated Press religious coverage is supported through AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. AP is solely responsible for this content.

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