Maybe they should just cut attendance by 20%? /sarc.
This is a good move in my opinion.
If people weren’t generally ‘trashy’ and took out what they brought in, this wouldn’t be necessary.
Maybe they will sell Nalgene bottles. And people will use them once for their visit and then toss them.
PC run utterly amok.
This will save on trash volume but kill tourists, as inadequately prepared hikers who can't buy last minute water bottles hit the trail with insufficient water and an assumption that they will be fine since it's a cool day. I imagine the Obama Administration considers that a net win.
I ended my volunteerism with the NPS when the idiots made me register my Civil War single shot black powder pistol just so I could perform living history at a park.
So they’re not gonna sell water, but are they going to sell Coca Cola and Gatorade????????????????
Next, the Luddites-N-Green will mandate we drink only from local springs.
And then only according to the rites of the Indigenous Peoples.
Last summer I took the family hiking up the Boulder flat irons, Rocky Mt. Nat. Pk., Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and many spots along the way. We carried canteens (gallon jugs in the car), but I could count the number of expended water bottles that we saw on one hand. Those appeared to be accidental drops over developed overviews.
Can’t say I saw a trash problem. As for cutting down on the amount of trash to carry out of parks, I’m thinking water containers should be at the bottom of the list. People need to hydrate.
I do think this will result in a fair amount of dehydration, as people who visit the parks are VISITORS, and don’t know how much water they need in dry, high elevations.
They should at least offer affordable canteen rigs if that is what they want to push.
Good.
I hate throwaway plastic water bottles. They are the biggest marketing “scam” (for lack of a better word) of my lifetime. Huge companies selling bottled NJ tap water at a 3000% markup to idiots. I’ll never understand it.
I love when people complain about $3.80 gas - extracted from the earth from thousands of miles away using high technology, transported, refined, transported and taxed - while sipping a $1.89 pint of tap water. do the math what that tap water - which is close to free in most of our country - costs per gallon.
If idiots don’t bring water/containers and decide to set off on a hike (how many tourists actually hike at the Grand Canyon anyway? 4% tops?) then screw ‘em.
If the park were privately operated, we wouldn’t have to worry if this decision made sense.
It seemed like the article was more concerned about landfill than litter. Nonetheless; how about this?
Sell bottled water to those who are unprepareed with a $5.00 deposit on the bottle. I guraantee that bottle will come back. If not today, then tomorrow.
You find those water bottles on the ground, in the bushes, everywhere up there.
Might not be a bad idea, since they can’t seem to get people to realize that the canyon is a place to be respected.
The mule ride to Phantom Ranch includes a bota bag with the purchase.
I do NOT think it was a coincidence that “Evian” spelled backwards is “Naive”
The French sense of humor, I presume...
(oh- it was proven that it is bottled from plain old tap water)
Buy a canteen !!!
Coming soon, this headline:
National Part service agrees to transfer park deed to vacationers’ estates, in lieu of massive lawsuit punative damages, in controversial “Waterbottle-gate” park dehydration deaths.
Tusayan stores overjoyed!!!