Once celebrated for its purity, the Ganges River of India now carries contaminates from its glacial headwaters, where freshly fallen snow contains zinc from industrial emissions. Downriver, it is dammed 16 times to provide hydroelectric power and flood control.
All along its course, water is diverted from the river for agriculture and other uses, and the 500 million people in the Ganges basin further pollute the river with household trash, industrial waste, raw sewage and the remains of the dead.