Posted on 12/02/2020 7:30:04 AM PST by SJackson
With toilets in short supply, ordure can harm streams and wildlife. An entrepreneur has a nifty solution
Supported by SEJ About this content Grant Stringer Wed 2 Dec 2020 05.15 EST 55 For 20 years, Richard Lechleitner had a grueling task at Mt Rainier national park: digging human waste out of backcountry toilets and carrying it down the mountains.
Staff at the park in Washington state grappled with an influx of visitors hiking far from roads, along with thousands of climbers attempting to reach the active volcano’s 14,000-foot summit each year. People heeded the call of nature on Mt. Rainier’s pristine glaciers, as well as in its unvarnished wilderness toilets.
“They’d put in these horrible toilets that just smelled terrible,” Lechleitner said. Maintaining them, he found, was appallingly dirty work.
At national parks across the US, from the peaks of Denali in Alaska to desert backpacking destinations in Utah and Arizona, managers have struggled to deal with this inevitable byproduct of people eager to get outdoors, a desire that continues amid the pandemic. Unlike a discarded Clif Bar wrapper, human waste carries a slew of bacteria and pathogens when left unbagged or otherwise unaddressed.
Colorado’s Rocky Mountain national park has been hit especially hard. There, a surge in visitors meant toilet paper became a more common sight in wilderness areas, rangers told the Guardian. But the park is now known nationally for pioneering a solution used at other sites, including Mt Rainier.
Between 2016 and 2019, the 265,000-acre park near Denver saw a 40% increase in visitors hiking and climbing its woods and jagged peaks.
..snip..
“This is some of the worst work in the world,” said Geoff Hill, a toilet entrepreneur who worked with the park’s rangers as a doctoral student studying backcountry waste.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
I wonder what he's getting his Phd in. There can't be one in outdoor waste, can there?
Well if they’re made in to “turtle islands” and only “they” get to use them, that should clear up.
Maybe he can find a solution for urban human waste?
It despoils the scenic beauty of our cities...
The people at Mt. Raineer have been wanting to restrict access for decades.
Ridiculous...It’s fertilizer...
Make surrounding structure portable, intermittently pick up and move to new hole, fill in old hole with dirt from new hole, repeat as necessary
Or burn it. I recognize many places face high usage, but you’d think some sort of composting or self packaging unit could be developed. Of course I doubt the funds are there.
What happened to “if you brought it in, take it out”, and “don’t leave anything behind, except your footprints”.
Remember when they caught a guy in hip waders trying to take pictures. Hire that guy. He’d probably work for free.
Depends?
Pack and carry
The article seems to have been written by someone who does not have a great deal of knowledge or understanding about sewage and sewage treatment.
...a toilet entrepreneur who worked with the park’s rangers as a doctoral student studying backcountry waste.
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Toilet entrepreneur? Not something one sees on a resume every day.
Boy who would have thought...
Way back before Boy Scouts became another opportunity for the Gay mafia to practice their disgusting craft, we were actually taught where and how to dig a hole or trench at least 2' deep to take care of this business.
Charge more for admission, put in more rangers and fine those who don't carry their waste with them.
https://www.amazon.com/Disposable-Emergency-Portable-Must-have-Self-Driving/dp/B07T256RRW/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=portable+mini+toilet+for+hiking&qid=1606925047&sr=8-8
I wonder what he’s getting his Phd in.
Piled High and Deep.
Shi*, shovel, shut up.
I probably spent 60 nights so far this year camping/outdoors
The mess out there is heart breaking and disgusting.
Much of the blame goes to state and local govt for their genius idea of locking up the bathrooms in parks.
Gee, what do you think people were going to do, hold it til they got home? F’n idiots.
And what’s the deal with dog owners leaving plastic bags of dog $hit along the trail? Worse than doing nothing.
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