Chhath Puja's requirement that devotees stand in natural water at sunset and sunrise has become a genuine practical and environmental challenge in large Indian cities where rivers are heavily polluted, most visibly the Yamuna in Delhi, where the river's water quality around the festival period has repeatedly drawn public health warnings and media attention, since large numbers of devotees, including the fasting vrati observing the most demanding rites of the festival, wade into water that testing has shown to be contaminated with industrial and sewage pollutants.
City governments in Delhi, Mumbai, Patna and elsewhere have responded by constructing temporary artificial ghats, cleaner tanks and dedicated riverside sites specifically for Chhath, along with deploying additional sanitation, lighting and medical support for the dawn and dusk gatherings, a significant annual logistical undertaking that has turned the accommodation of a folk religious practice into a recurring test of urban water management and public health planning in cities whose natural water bodies were not maintained with this use in mind.
Chhath has also travelled with the Bihari and Purvanchali diaspora far beyond India: communities in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Gulf states now construct their own temporary ghats, often beside a lake, reservoir or even a swimming pool where no natural river is available, so that migrants can keep the specific requirement of standing offerings in open water even in cities and climates far removed from the Gangetic plain the festival originates in.