Fran Peavey | July, 2002

Q : The site cleanganga.com gives a story about a dirty Indian river and a cleaned river in the developed world. My questions is have all rivers in the west been cleaned?

	Fran Peavey, center, is a founding member of the Campaign, for a Clean Ganga

Of course very few rivers are really clean. Most cities and towns in the world are working to cleanup the effluent they send into their rivers. This is a job most cities and towns need to do now with a certain urgency.

Do I infer from your letter that you think India should wait until all other rivers in the West are clean before the people of India clean a first-class river like Ganga? If that is the meaning of your question I could not disagree with you more.

Surely I do not need to tell you in a journal like the wonder and specialness of Ganga. I wish this many years ago at the beginning of the sewage movement; I would've argued that Ganga is such a special river that it should be the first of all rivers to be cleaned. I know of no other rivers in the West that are thought to be a Goddess. Therefore it would not be hard to make argument that Ganga should be the first clean.

But because she has not been the first - let her not be the last. Lets clean her now. She is waiting.

Fran Peavey is one of the founding members of Sankat Mochan Foundation, which leads the Campaign for a Clean Ganga. She is also President of Friends of the Ganges USA.

For more reading, visit the following sites :
Ganga: http://www.cs.albany.edu/~amit/ganges.html