We camped two nights in the Grand Canyon on our recent Rim To Rim hike. One night at the Bright Angel Campground and then another at the Cottonwood Campground. At Bright Angel there are flush toilets. At Cottonwood there are, for lack of a better description, outhouses (amazingly they don’t smell).
Anyway, where/how is the human waste disposed of? At Bright Angel it’s flushed, but where. And at Cottonwood just how does the Park Service get the waste out of the canyon? Vehicles can’t get down there and I can’t imagine anyone carries it out. Helicopter, maybe? Anyone know how the outhouses are constructed/how they work?
WAGs here, but chances are the flush toilets just go into a septic tankand the outhouses are either a composting toilet or they just move the outhouse when the pit gets full.
In both septic tanks and composting toilets the sewage is broken down by bacteria and the resulting mass is a lot less stinky and smaller than what you may expect.
I don’t know how they do it but you can compost human waste just fine especially in limited amounts. Bacteria break it down and it isn’t bulky or a pollutant if you do it correctly after it is processed through semi-natural steps.
In my Canoe & Kayak magazinea year or two ago, there was an article about a guide on the Colorado. He actually spent 2-3 years just gathering and packing out trash and waste. That was his job. There are outdoor/camping toilets along the way, and 5 gallon buckets with a seat on top; he made the rounds and hiked it all out. IIRC, he was just in a place mentally where he just wanted a menial task with little interaction with people.
Just finding himself with the water, if you will.
I was bored, so I decided to calculate how long it would take to fill the Grand Canyon with human waste, namely bowel movements only. By my calculation, it would take 6894 years.
Assumptions:
Volume of Grand Canyon is 5.45 trillion cubic yards
7 billion people on Earth
Average daily bowel movement is 1 cup
Oh God, no. Shit should be kept out of the river at all costs. Pee is okay. I’m not sure how the NPS does it, but it must be self contained. Otherwise, Pack it in; Pack it out. Poo is pretty much the worse kind of litter.
You neglected to factor in the amount of erosion during all those years, increasing the canyon’s volume. And I think a lot of people (e.g. 3rd world) poop considerably less than 1 cup a day.
The standard procedure on farms before running water and indoor plumbing - dig a hole, put the outhouse over it, and when the pit is full, cover it over and move the building to a new hole. The Halloween traition was to move the outhouse back a few feet so the unsuspecting farmer found the hole.
Assuming the Parks people are OK with covered holes, I would suggest they then plant a nice hardy tree in the middle of the covered hole. It should grow nicely and reduce the risk of people falling through.
In any other locale, contamination might be an issue - but if the holes are stregically located, run-off would not hurt or uncover them, and ground-water is obviously not a concern in a semi-desert location. Plus, I assume unlike more wet locales, the contents of the pit will dry out quicker so it’s not a soft soggy mass.
(In Hampton Court Palace, there’s the “great vine”, a massive grapvine that covers much of an acre and speculation is it hit either a very nice old alluvial deposit, or more likely an old giant cesspit from the place. Recycle…)
What are campers told about calls of nature outside the designated pit stops? I assume the “if you go then bury it” still applies like any polite camping location?
Many Park Service and Forest Service toilets in areas with vehicular access are vault toilets. They are just a big concrete tank underground with a stool over the top. When required, a pumping truck (AKA “honey wagon”) arrives and sucks the waste into a large tank on the truck, then hauls it to sewage treatment facility.
Because the waste must be vacuumed through a 3-4" hose, there will be signs pleading with you not to put anything except urine, feces, and toilet paper into the stool. (usually in less technical language) Notice that short list fails to mention any feminine hygiene products, nor disposable diapers. Things that clog up the suction hose make a very unpleasant job even worse. The fact that people will ignore these instructions is the single biggest problem with vault toilets.
I wish I could find a link to the Bob and Ray public service announcement that says, “Visitors, do not throw trash into the Grand Canyon.” It’s not on YouTube. But is apt.
From the NPS site:
*Q: Are there toilets in the canyon?
A: There are very few. Not all campsites have toilet facilities. Be prepared to provide your own toilet paper. Where toilets are available, you must use them. Only human waste and toilet paper should be deposited in the toilets. Where toilets are not available you must carry out your used toilet paper (a plastic ziplock bag works well) and bury feces in a small hole about 6 in / 15 cm deep. Be sure you are at least 200 ft / 60 m from trails, campsites, and water sources. Along the Colorado River, urinate directly into the wet sand at the river’s edge.*
Thanks for stipulating that it’s 6 inches “deep” and not “long.”