Wild, wild waste

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — There’s a gawd-awful smell in God’s country. On remote foot paths and along the banks of wild rivers, up and down the craggy cliffs of mountain trails and through the dense woods of our national parks and forests, human waste, some say, is giving new meaning to breathtaking views.

At Yosemite and Mount Rainier. At Mount McKinley and Mount Shasta. Complaints and concerns are mounting. Some animals — mountain goats and deer among them — have altered their behavior because of the strange new scent. Human waste also threatens to contaminate streams and small lakes.

All of which leads some experts who tend to America’s natural treasures to conclude that the next frontier — and the latest preservation challenge — is waste management in the wilderness.

A complex and persistent concern in urban areas, managing human waste in the wild is a subtle, often overlooked issue. Instead of building more toilets and outhouses and, in turn, rendering the wild less wild, hikers and campers and climbers may be asked — or even required — to pack out their own waste when they head back to the city. Rafters in the Grand Canyon are already obliged to do so.

“A lot of people are offended by the idea and would just like to have someone else take care of their waste,” said Garry Oye, a U.S. Forest Service regional program leader. “But as the world gets more crowded, particularly around the mountains and rivers, people are going to have to pack out their waste.”

At Mount Rainier National Park near Seattle, park workers put human waste from remote toilets in 55-gallon drums and haul them out by helicopter. The same is true at Yosemite, where waste was once carried out by mule.

Rainier has also been a leader in the “blue bag” project, handing out special bags to mountain climbers and asking them to pick up after themselves. Mount Shasta officials are handing out similar bags.

Campers know that the common method of dealing with human feces is to dig “cat holes,” 6-inch deep holes to bury waste and paper. “If there are 200 or 300 campers doing the same thing, it’s not too long before you’re digging up someone else’s waste,” said Oye.

In mountain country, where people often bury their waste in the snow, there is an unsightly mess when the snow melts, according to park workers.

Leave No Trace, a multiagency project that encourages cleanliness in the wild, is seeking new solutions to the waste problem. The program recently invited the makers of Brief Relief, a disposable urine bag, and Disposa-John, its counterpart for defecation, to a wilderness workshop in Colorado. The products, which use polymers and enzymes to begin breaking down urine and feces, are already used by dozens of utility companies whose employees work in areas without toilets. The bags are acceptable for disposal in the regular trash rather than going through waste treatment.

“I’m always interested in new technology in managing waste in the back country,” said Ralph Swain, national coordinator of Leave No Trace. But Swain and others say the plastic bag products may not be the final solution. The bags, he said, will add to the landfill problem. There are 378 parks in the national park system, covering 83 million acres. In 1998, 287 million people visited the parks. Because each park sets its budget allocations differently, there is no telling how much of the system’s $1.7 billion annual budget is spent on waste management, according to a National Park Service official.

At Yosemite, workers are experimenting with a solar baker, or “hot box,” essentially a sun-powered oven that breaks down human waste helicoptered in from the remote composting toilets. The waste in the toilets is combined with wood chips. Once it is baked and made safe, it is used for topsoil in the park’s gardens. [Note: A similar method, known as “making brownies,” has been employed in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. ALDHA member Kevin Metheny has illustrated this technique in a slide show at past Gatherings.]

Still, Yosemite is struggling with the waste management issue in the back country, according to John Clark, a facility management specialist for the National Park Service. The composting toilets, he says, don’t really work because they are overused and the excessive moisture prevents the waste from decomposing. That’s why the hot box is used.

“Away from the service areas,” Clark said, “we have cement vault toilets where the waste has to be pumped out. People don’t like to use them because they don’t smell very good.”

The park gets complaints at heavily traveled Inspiration Point “all the time,” according to Clark. “Sometimes you pull over to the side of the road to take a picture and you look over the edge and see toilet paper and human waste,” he said.

Swain and Oye say the waste problem has affected some animal behavior, a no-no in Leave No Trace circles. Mountain goats and bighorn sheep have been known to paw at soil and rocks because of the scent of human urine. Deer have been seen licking the rocks because of the salt left behind by urine. The solution is dilution, says Swain, explaining that pouring water over urine will reduce the scent and wash away the salt.

Roger Drake, who oversaw the “blue bag” program at Mount Rainier before transferring to the Grand Canyon, says health concerns have grown in recent years. “It is pretty disgusting to think about,” Drake said, “but after being around these bags for a few years, I’ve seen some people do it pretty well and others make a mess of it.”

Oye and others say the answer to wilderness waste management will not necessarily be more rules or greater enforcement — park rangers hiding behind trees and writing tickets. Instead, it will come down to encouraging people to deal with waste appropriately.

“A lot of people would like to joke about this but eventually the joking has to cease and we have to look at what problem this presents us,” said Oye.

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