National Parks across the United States are struggling with waste and rubbish thanks to the government shutdown.
As the government shutdown reaches two weeks, the majority of national parks across the US have had their main offices closed. Although some national parks have contingency plans to ensure they can keep a small staff on the payroll and stay open for visitors, the plan does not allow for enough staff to handle visitors’ waste on site.
“It’s a free-for-all,” Dakota Snider, an employee working in Yosemite Valley, in California’s Yosemite National Park, told the Associated Press. “There is more trash and human waste and disregard for the rules than I’ve seen in my four years living here.”
The shutdown-proof crew have trouble keeping up with the tourists flocking to their parks since there are not staff available to collect admission fees. In addition to entrance personnel, national parks—like Yosemite—do not have enough staff to clean bathrooms, restock toilet paper or remove rubbish bags.
There are not any official numbers on just how many garbage has been piled on in the parks, but Quartz estimates that there are roughly 27 tons of garbage compiled on Yosemite National Park since the shutdown started. Previous estimates suggest that Yosemite tourists create about 2,200 tons of rubbish yearly.
“Between 2001 and 2016, there were an average of 118,889 visitors to Yosemite in December and 108,026 in January,” Quartz reported. “Based on those numbers, we can estimate that there were 45,321 visitors over the dates of the shutdown—38,351 people for the 10 shutdown days in December and 6,969 for the two so far in January—and that, on average, each visitor generated about a pound (half a kilogram) of waste per day. “
This sums up to a total of 26.9 tons of waste. The figure is likely to be an underestimate considering that there is a reported surge of visitors flocking to Yosemite due to the lack of admission fees.
Without staff to clean restrooms, many visitors have been forced to go to the toilet in less desirable places — like on the campgrounds. For example, in Joshua Tree National Park in California, the portable toilets are overflowing causing the park to close some areas on Wednesday. Yosemite also had to close several of its campgrounds and entrances due to hazardous human waste and Rubbish.
“We’re afraid that we’re going to start seeing significant damage to the natural resources in parks and potentially to historic and other cultural artefacts,” John Garder, a senior budget director of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, told AP. “We’re concerned there’ll be impacts to visitors’ safety.”
The newly Democratic-controlled House of Representatives are expected to vote on a bill to reopen the government on Thursday, but the legislation will not include the $5bn in funding for President Donald Trump’s wall on the US-Mexico border. The bill is also not expected to pass the Republican-controlled Senate, and if it does pass, it is still unlikely that Mr Trump will sign the bill into law.
