Which country has the cleanest rivers in the world? The kind where you can tip your boat over and drink right from the river without fear of pollution or parasites.


Seeing some surf videos got me thinking about this question. Obviously the appeal of places like indonesia for surfers is that the waves are REALLY good, but also part of the appeal for surfers is the pristine nature of the water. You see the pictures where the water is crystal clear. No pollution whatsoever. This is part of the appeal also as most people are used to surfing in coastal places in the US or Europe where there is pollution or sewage in the water etc.


So I started to wonder, well what is the equivalent for paddlers? What country in the world has the most clean and pristina whitewater rivers in the world where the water is crystal clear, and people would feel fine drinking straight from it or bottling it?



Norway? New Zealand? Corsica? Italian alps? Iceland? The Chilean futaleufu maybe?



It would be nice to live in a country with whitewater rivers so clean you can drink from them.

Here in NZ I drink out of alot of rivers, although there is a risk of giardia in rivers surrounded by farms (and I have friends who will still drink heavily from these rivers and not get sick), there are also alot of other rivers that are just fine.

The water in most of the rivers I paddle looks like cold tea:(
therefore drinking the water is not an option.

Sadly the river water in good old blighty is not recommended for drinking without some form of treatment first.

However, before having to grow up & try & be sensible my previous occupation took me to some interesting corners of the world.

The Norwegian Fjords have some of the cleanest & beautiful waters I have seen in Europe. I think it could be something to do with the fact that the country is sparsly populated. I wonder if this is the case with other rivers in remote parts of the world where people don't get to much.

I guess this would be a good excuse for those that can to explore these areas & find out.

Wish it could be me!!

Pete46

I'll put in a vote for Tasmania. Generally its fine to drink from any ww river, although those in the highlands and the west coast look like tea because of the tannins (but taste fine). I remember Some of the german slalom team came to train with us once on the Derwent river. Our gates were set up just over the road from a friendly farmer. Peter Micheler went over after a hard training session to ask for a drink of water, and received a puzzled look with his glass of water which had been pumped straight from where he'd just been training!
Sadly, some of Tasmania's rivers are now polluted by chemicals used as pesticides in forestry operations.

nzshred wrote:

Here in NZ I drink out of alot of rivers, although there is a risk of giardia in rivers surrounded by farms (and I have friends who will still drink heavily from these rivers and not get sick), there are also alot of other rivers that are just fine.

Just curious, do you find that the cleanest and best rivers to drink out of are also the ones that are glacial fed?

pete46 wrote:

The Norwegian Fjords have some of the cleanest & beautiful waters I have seen in Europe. I think it could be something to do with the fact that the country is sparsly populated.

Pete46

I wonder if it has more to do with the fact that a lot of norwegian whitewater is glacial fed, or at least that is my understanding.


The beautiful thing to me about some of the rivers in Norway is how they have a milky blue color or a sky blue color. It's quite beautiful. Maybe that's what you are referring to?


I also notice that milky blue/ sky blue color with some NZ rivers too.

Scroll down to the lower half of this page.....

www.2imagine.net/blogger2006/cm.html


There is some nice looking water and it has a bit of that color I was talking about. I think it has to do with the glacier water, which makes sense since the picture is from the mountainous region of italy.

The water in corsica looks very clear and clean, check this out....




Skip to the 51 second mark.



And here is another one....




Skip to the 1:36 minute mark.

Here is a great example of that sky blue/milky blue water I was talking about before....


In this case it is on the Futaleufu in Chile. It's an absolutely gorgeous river.

In NZ the glacial fed rivers are not the clearest or the most drinkable. Glacial fed rivers carry with them fine glacial deposits which are derived from grinding down rocks on their way down the valleys. This is particularly true nearer the glaciers, rivers such as the Fox, Hooker, whataroa etc all have a greyish hue about them. Once they have been settled in a lake they tend to have this 'aqua' colour.

I would say rivers in northern Scandinavia are quite clean. You can happily drink the water from them without any purification. The reason why the rivers are clean is that the drainages are wilderness area without human population.

Jurgen wrote:

In NZ the glacial fed rivers are not the clearest or the most drinkable. Glacial fed rivers carry with them fine glacial deposits which are derived from grinding down rocks on their way down the valleys. This is particularly true nearer the glaciers, rivers such as the Fox, Hooker, whataroa etc all have a greyish hue about them. Once they have been settled in a lake they tend to have this 'aqua' colour.

So the NZ rivers that are aqua colored are the ones that are glacial fed BUT are far enough from the glacier that the sediments can have a chance to settle out of the water? Becuase if the source of that aqua color isn't some how tied ultimately to something to do with a glacier, then I don't know what else would give it that color.

I don't know if Croft has paddled here, but Verzasca looks really nice.

I guess in a round about sort of way this river colour is tied into glacial action. Some of these rivers (mainly South Island) are flowing over post glacial outwash plains and in an indirect way are picking up these fine particles giving them this colour. So even rivers that are not glacier fed but do flow over these plains have this colour. Possibly related to the complex geology of NZ which has a lot of schist and greywacke rock which powderises easily.

Maybe some of the watersheds on Reunion Island? Some footage of this area can be found in one of the Teton Gravity videos. I think it is Nurpu.

Jurgen wrote:

I guess in a round about sort of way this river colour is tied into glacial action. Some of these rivers (mainly South Island) are flowing over post glacial outwash plains and in an indirect way are picking up these fine particles giving them this colour. So even rivers that are not glacier fed but do flow over these plains have this colour. Possibly related to the complex geology of NZ which has a lot of schist and greywacke rock which powderises easily.

I did some quick google and wiki research and found this on why the Futaleufu has the color we're talking about....

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futaleufú_River

\"The river is known for its deep blue waters created by glacier till deposited in the river,\"


So basically what gives the river its color is the glacier till.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till

Which is kind of amazing considering what till apparently looks like....

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Glacial_till...in_roadcut-750px.jpg

Experience Bliss-Stick wrote:

Maybe some of the watersheds on Reunion Island? Some footage of this area can be found in one of the Teton Gravity videos. I think it is Nurpu.

I didn't think of that.


I think I remember seeing some reunion island canyoneering/paddling in a TGR video. It looked kind of fun. Not much of a paddling destination though.

SenorPepe wrote:

Experience Bliss-Stick wrote:

Maybe some of the watersheds on Reunion Island? Some footage of this area can be found in one of the Teton Gravity videos. I think it is Nurpu.

I didn't think of that.


I think I remember seeing some reunion island canyoneering/paddling in a TGR video. It looked kind of fun. Not much of a paddling destination though.

well, it doesn't look too bad for kayaking i think:
www.thinkliquid.net/in-flux/index.php/ga...otos/reunion#gallery

Jeroen wrote:

SenorPepe wrote:

Experience Bliss-Stick wrote:

Maybe some of the watersheds on Reunion Island? Some footage of this area can be found in one of the Teton Gravity videos. I think it is Nurpu.

I didn't think of that.


I think I remember seeing some reunion island canyoneering/paddling in a TGR video. It looked kind of fun. Not much of a paddling destination though.

well, it doesn't look too bad for kayaking i think:
www.thinkliquid.net/in-flux/index.php/ga...otos/reunion#gallery

I stand corrected. Indeed, that looks much more promising than the footage I saw in the past.







Although, I think tropical rivers tend to have a LOT of issues with parasites (nematodes, amoebas, liver flukes etc)



Looks pretty though

SenorPepe wrote:

Jurgen wrote:

In NZ the glacial fed rivers are not the clearest or the most drinkable. Glacial fed rivers carry with them fine glacial deposits which are derived from grinding down rocks on their way down the valleys. This is particularly true nearer the glaciers, rivers such as the Fox, Hooker, whataroa etc all have a greyish hue about them. Once they have been settled in a lake they tend to have this 'aqua' colour.

So the NZ rivers that are aqua colored are the ones that are glacial fed BUT are far enough from the glacier that the sediments can have a chance to settle out of the water? Becuase if the source of that aqua color isn't some how tied ultimately to something to do with a glacier, then I don't know what else would give it that color.

Sorry for this very late reply - but yes, even though the rivers carry glacial deposits we (myself and friends) do find that these rivers are the nicest to drink from. (E.g. the Matakitaki river) This is of course provided they are not running at flood, which tends to deposit even more sediment into the river to give it a dirty grey look.
With that in mine, you can also find alot of waterfalls feeding into NZ rivers that are perfectly fine to drink from.