Sarada,

It is a growing problem. The Los Angeles River is a prime example of a river turned into a large concrete drainage canal with only a trickle in the bottom. These channelized and paved waterways are part of a larger problem insomuch as the normal process where rainwater soaks into the ground through the river bottom and flanks, thus nourishing riverine vegetation and recharging the water table, can not happen. The best solution probably would be to realign streams and rivers so that they take a wide berth around settlements rather than through or beside them.

I know in Louisiana that gravel companies are required to realign streams that their operations impinge upon and provide a wooded buffer zone between the gravel pit and the stream. This allows the natural flow of the stream in its new channel, along with a speedy recovery for any wildlife.

As to the problem of garbage, this is a threefold issue. Illegal dumping of household and commercial waste will always be a problem, even if more severe fines and punishments are mandated. A campaign of education, telephone hotlines for reporting illegal dumping, and law enforcement patrols in susceptible locations during prime dumping hours (late night to very early morning) will help curtail the practice.

Commercial landfill near streams and rivers is another matter. In the United States garbage dumps often are near rivers because the floodplain land is cheaper to purchase. Our Environmental Protection Agency has strict guidelines concerning the type of soil in which these garbage dumps can be located. They have to be in an impermeable clay so that any liquids can not penetrate to the water table. Each day's deposit of trash must be covered with a minimum of 15.24 cm of compacted clay. There must be a ring levee around the landfill to prevent rainwater run off from entering any nearby stream or flood waters from impacting the dump. However, there often are violations in both the sealing of the trash layers and, during torrential rains, overtopping or breaches in the levee.

Discharge of toxic wastes in river systems or rainwater run off in factory settings also occur frequently. These potentially are worse than any of the above except for the illegal dumping of hazardous waste because of the long-lived chemicals and heavy metals often present in these discharges. Government policing and corporate environmental responsibility can be hoped for to decrease occurrences, but I fear that no one is holding their breath for that to resolved the issue anytime soon.

Dr Green gave an excellent answer.  When I grew up in Nebraska and went to college in Missouri, we had all sorts of issues with dumping.  Even on the national forests there were issues with dumping that has been largely curtailed, but still locally a problem.  One thing here in where I live in SC and the national forest is partnering with counties to have free recycling centers, where you both dump your trash, and set aside plastics, glass, old batteries, various electrical devices and refrigerators, couches, chairs, lawn mowers, used oil, etc. into various location at each center.  People drive up Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and can dump there stuff at the proper locations.  Some of these centers have be in partnership with counties on the national forest.  This has helped a lot.  Also on the  national forest, we use law enforcement to try to track down dumpers and give them tickets and they have to appear before a magistrate to settle.  In Nebraska, we used to throw stuff out of the car along the roads.  there were anti-litter programs which took several years to take hold, for people to realize that they were messing up the roadsides, etc.  Over time, things have improved very much and trash along roads is much less.  Its part education and enforcement, but there has to be a somewhat convenient place for people to use.  We also have various types of solid and hazardous waste dumps that the recycling centers haul to where they manage the wastes over time.  Materials that can be recycled are recycled, such as used motor oil is recycled, plastics, etc.  There are some people who are given jobs to do this.  We also have paid trash pickup for people willing to pay someone in a dump truck to take there trash for them each week.  Some people use this service, especially in cities, where recycle centers may not be that close by.  Some cities probably have a mandatory tax to provide for this service to every one, and maintain also city trashcans for visitors.  This is a job for some individuals, and probably somewhat well paid since you are living with bad smells, etc. all the time while on the job.

Oh, one thing Dr Green mentioned about relocating streams around cities, I have seen what rechannelization of streams can do.  This is not something that I would recommend except perhaps in the most dire conditions as altering streams can also create a boat load of issues. Get some good hydrologists and engineers if you try to do the channel relocation, and perhaps you might have to do relocation temporarily to get in there to clean things up and stabilize the damage.  Some people are brought up that you dump trash by the river and it will float it away.  They don't know that far place away may be in someone else's back yard or foul up someone motor boat or fish line with trash. If you look at my researchgate paper from 1984, we had a chemical spill in a small stream Willow Creek.  It may take a few years, but if you remove the trash and pollutants, the water quality and aquatic habitat should eventually improve. 

William,

Thank you. Unfortunately, some people are beyond redemption. Growing up, our county like much of rural america did not have a rural garbage collection system. It was the responsibility of the citizens to take their own trash to the county-maintained waste disposal facility (dump). Not long after high school I actually owned and ran a private garbage service for a number of years. Then the county put a rural garbage collection tax on the ballot and the citizens approved it, thus everybody paid for their trash collection service through a fraction of the county sales tax. The county then used the money to contract with one of the major waste management firms for the rural collection.

I personally knew people who dug holes on their property and buried their trash or threw it in the creek after the tax was passed. Why? Because they did not like the government telling them they had to use the rural collection service, even while agreeing that they were paying for it through the tax.

William,

The parish (county) in which I now live channelized and realigned a lot of small to medium sized streams in the late 1950s as part of a drainage improvement campaign. Yes, it does create problems. One major problem is that by eliminating the meanders you speed up the stream velocity, which in turn can cause faster erosion rates and downcutting. It also delivers the water downstream from freshets more quickly, which minimizes the amount of ground penetration and absorption, and can overload the capacity of the lower stream elevations by dumping too much water for the system to handle. The increased erosion also can cause the lower stream network to silt up, thus raising the channel bed and decreasing the carrying capacity. This will cause more frequent over-bank flooding, etc.

Thank you very much James A Green and William F. Hansen for your answers.  I am attaching two of the photographs of the said river taken from the window of my department. This rural or I can say the rurban area does not have any mechanism of collecting garbage. Now one bridge is being built up with the pillars coming out right from the rivers. So recently the ebb tide flow has also been blocked. Kindly advise me about what initiatives should the college take to clean the river.

You may consider reading the case study on the Pasig River Rehabilitation in the Philippines. Please see the link below:

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/resourcesquality/wpccasestudy3.pdf

By inculcating a sense of social responsibility in people or organizations. It is only through stern law.

Here are the pdf attachments pertaining to restoration of dying rivers for your persual.

Sarada,

Is this currently a dry river bed that only flows after rains? You noted that columns (pilings?) for the bridge are in the river, thus tidal flow is prevented. I then assume that the dry riverbed turns into a tidal river close to its mouth? And that periods of rain have washed garbage up against the pilings in sufficient mass to form a damn?

Please clarify.

Saraswati ( The name is after the goddess of knowledge) River refers to a river, that was a distributary of the Bhagirathi (a branch of the mighty Ganges, the lifeline of northern and eastern India) and is now no more there but was active till around the 16th century AD.(Majumdar, 1971) The course and condition of the Saraswati has played an important role in the development and decline of many river port towns in West Bengal. Initially, the major port town was Tamralipta, after the decline of which Saptagram rose and declined, and finally Kolkata came up.

At Tribeni near Bandel in Hugli District in the Indian state of West Bengal the Bhagirathi branched off into three streams. The Saraswati flowed south-west beyond Saptagram, the Jamuna  flowed south-east, past the northern boundary of present day town of Kalyani and the Bhagirathi proper flowing through the present Hugli channel to Kolkata and then through Adi Ganga, past Kalighat, to the sea. It is believed that the Saraswati flowed into an estuary near present-day Tamluk and received the waters of not only the R. Rupnarayan and R. Damodar but several other smaller streams. Sometime after the 8th century AD, Tamralipta lost its importance primarily on account of silting up of the mouth of Saraswati and the consequent shifting of its course.

In the 16th century, the main waters of the Bhagirathi, which earlier used to flow through the Saraswati, started flowing through the Hugli channel. In the course of time, the upper Saraswati dried up, but the Bhagirathi or Hugli has abandoned the old Adi Ganga channel and flows through the lower course of the Saraswati below Sankrail. (Majumdar, 1971) 

There is a clear indication of the river in Van den Brouck’s map of 1660.

 Present Position of Saraswati River:

The River Saraswati is one of the highly polluted rivers of the Hugli and Howrah district.

Many adjoining areas of the river have been identified as areas affected by pollutant and contaminant. 

The hydraulic regime of this area was largely modified due to expansion of agriculture, indiscriminate exploitation of ground water, depletion of forest cover, expansion of road and railways and building of dams and barrages across the rivers. All these events were combined to contribute increasing sediment load and diminishing water in the river. 

The Issues identified:

§  Natural drain (Saraswati river) has been exploited by the adjacent area and dumped with solid waste and harmful chemicals

§  Informal settlements (Houses, shops, godowns etc.) in the bank of the river have no sanitation facilities, hence adding all waste to the river

§  Catchment areas lack buffer zones increasing the runoff without percolation and reducing the ground water level

§  Planning regulation have no zoning done to protect the catchment area from deforestation and encroachment

§  Citizens are deprived of the riverfront space for recreation

In short, In the lower reaches of Ganges, one of the two distributaries Padma flows to Bangladesh and other Bhagirathi or Hugli flows through Indian state of West Bengal. Both joining into Bay of Bengal form the largest delta in the world. Saraswati comes out from Bhagirathi at Tribeni and again joins the mother channel at Sankrail. My college is in Sankrail.  Normally Tide enters into Saraswati from the mouth at Hugli. Though turned into gutter its flow is still perennial. 

See first link below which has links to some graphics. Apparently, the Saraswati started drying up from silting up and river flow changes from the 18th century. Part of it could be the channels feeding  were not maintained when rulers changed or earthquakes or extreme weather or other instances like deliberately blocking/diverting flows during battles, etc. Modern day urbanization with lack of enforcement of planning and environmental regulations has no doubt made it worse as you describe. Dredging and cleaning, and  rebuilding the original feed channels  could restore the flows along along with cleaning and allowing over time to recover.  Of course then those shacked up on the current narrow banks would then have to move and politicians will get into a rabid frenzy. 

http://murshidabad.net/news/news-id-8.htm

https://books.google.com/books?id=V6ceAXAEDLsC&pg=PA402&lpg=PA402&dq=saraswati+river+dries+up+in+bengal&source=bl&ots=nEYKbYxY35&sig=v239pojPwQOxdn5TPCRERI8IbEk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjj9br6xa_MAhVMGx4KHWtQBG8Q6AEIWzAM#v=onepage&q=saraswati%20river%20dries%20up%20in%20bengal&f=false

http://gejl.info/articles/Saraswati_River_(Bengal)

Just came across the link below which  explains the silting problem most of it made worse now  by "well-intentioned solutions which seemed a good idea at that time.

http://www.thethirdpole.net/2015/06/02/photo-essay-the-nowhere-people/

Mohan,

Yes, remediation is one solution. However, the expense likely would make it unfeasible to politicians or tax payers. One also has to look at upstream water availability. In this age of increased city populations and farm irrigation, these water demands might outweigh reinitialized water flow of this channel.

Small rivers or river-lets are drying in Bangladesh also. Reasons are:

(1) Reduced upstream flow

(2) Land filling, garbage dumping

(3) Construction, etc

Sometimes what we do

(1) Demolishing unauthorized constructions

(2) Re-excavation

(3) Garbage cleaning- community based 

The earlier responders have given you quite a lot, I will also add some planting along the original river banks which should help with the river drying off. And provide some form of lover seating around the plants- similar idea to the parks and gardens in the States.

Wow, I am impressed.  Great discussions.  I heard a new approach on the National Forest from an engineer friend.  The had a trash problem on a narrow road that dropped off into a gully head.  The trash continued to build and build.  They decided to remove the trash and widen the road and fill in the head of the gully, so people could not dirve up, back up to the gully head and drop their trash into it.  A new one.  You know, I actually seen gullies stabilized with trash, old cars, refrigerators, old furniture, all sorts of stuff.  Yes some people don't want regulations, and some do it in spite, but eventually change occurs. 

William,

Your gully story reminds me of another solution to trash disposal. From Sarada's description of the blase household garbage disposal, it sounds like the problem has become endemic to the residents. One way that some counties have combated rural dumping along streams is to clear the underbrush and open up the area so that nearby residents can see the location. This is termed the "shame factor" because people who illegally dump household waste are ashamed to be seen actually doing it. In an urban or suburban area where neighbors are nearby this could act as a deterrent. Unfortunately, in a rural setting the perpetrators often find another secretive location to throw their garbage.

Rivers metamorphosing into garbage dumps and gutter is solely an anthropocentric activity. No action plan would solve the issue until there is a strong political will to implement green methods to rejuvenate and maintain a minimum ecological flow in the tributaries. Human intervention in blocking the natural drainage from the first order stream onward naturally affects the health of a river. River and wetland regulations need to be implemented effectively while bringing a socio-cultural change among inhabitants on scientific waste disposal practices. River training must be minimized to maintain the natural rhythm of the ecosystem.

My College is situated on the left bank of River Saraswati in Sankrail. River Saraswati flows round the college premises. On the opposite bank there are many shops, marketing complexes and even multi storied residential buildings which are continuously dumping waste in the river channel. Due to the pressure of waste materials the flow of the river is gradually shifting towards the college premises on the left bank. The market and residential buildings on the right bank are encroaching inside the river. During the dredging of the said river, the gap between the bank and the building reduced fearfully along the northern and western boundary of the plot, because to save the intruders college side bank has been cut dangerously. Now long cracks are being developed at some parts of the north eastern and western section of the college building and serious damage has also been observed in the roof. The investigator doubts that perhaps the soil of the bank of the said river is settling down.

Mr. Green, you are right due to congestion of the built-up structures, the river remains invisible from the road. So people are indifferent to the real situation of dumping. 

Sarada,

From satellite images it appears that the Saraswati River is a deltaic distributary channel of the Hooghly River. This is based on the former footprint of the channel and its lessening in size the further you get from the Hooghly. I also see that there are numerous sections that are silted up or blocked off.

Unfortunately, the nature of deltaic distributary systems is that they transport water and sediments away from the main trunk of the river from which they feed. Often these distributaries are linked to the sea, where they build mini deltas flanking the primary. Like river crevasses, these distributaries build land along their course and particularly at their terminus. Since the elevation of the terrain at a distributary's terminus is lower than where it splits off of the main channel, water can only flow down the distributary from the primary channel. This usually occurs only during floods and allows more silt into the distributary. This is different from tributaries, which transport rain and spring water from higher elevations to the main river channel.

Several things can happen with these distributaries, but normally they silt up starting from their terminus and proceeding upstream. Often the primary river from which these distributaries spring deposits sediment at their mouth, thus cutting off the flow of water down the channel except during floods. Eventually these distributary channels completely silt up and are then considered relict distributary courses.

The only action that could be taken for the Saraswati River to get it flowing again would be to dredge the river and open it to the large channel immediately south of the Tamoni Dam. This would allow some of the water from the Hooghly to flow through the system, possibly keeping it clear. A flood gate system probably would need to be built at the junction of the Saraswati and Hooghly in order to control the flow during floods. Dredging also would be required from time to time to keep the mouth clear of sediments. The lower portion of the Saraswati is probably too built up and narrow to consider any options in relation to getting it to flow again.

Rivers are considered the lifeblood of the Earth. Together with pollution, drying of rivers are the major threats to rivers.

💧Happy World Rivers Day, everyone!💧