Restrooms becoming ecologically correct

Officials hope to eventually replace all the restrooms at Michigan’s 97 state parks and recreation areas.

GRAND HAVEN, Mich. (AP) — When nature calls, campers at Michigan’s Grand Haven State Park can now go “green” at a new, environmentally friendly toilet-shower building that is the first of its kind in the state park system.

Construction on a similar facility at Otsego Lake State Park near Gaylord is scheduled to begin this fall. Officials hope to eventually replace all the restrooms at Michigan’s 97 state parks and recreation areas with buildings like the one in Grand Haven, which opened for use May 5.

“This is the first of its kind, so we kind of get to be the ones to test it out,” says Patrick Whalen, supervisor of Grand Haven State Park.

The water- and energy-efficient product, designed by Grand Rapids-based Integrated Architecture LLC, features natural daytime lighting, artificial nighttime lighting triggered by occupancy detectors, timer-controlled showers with on-demand water heaters and reduced-flow shower heads, and low-flow toilets and urinals.

A small array of solar panels on the roof supplements the electricity used for the building’s ventilation system. Building materials, including masonry, metal and wood, were selected for their long-term maintenance qualities. A new sanitary sewer line should mean a safer watershed.

Green restrooms are a trend at recreation areas around the country, with some opting for composting toilets that require no water.

These bathrooms are billed as being clean and odor-free, and an improvement over portable potties or outhouses found in parks without easy access to water and sewer lines.

Advanced Composting Systems of Whitefish, Mont., has installed composting toilets in places ranging from California’s Mount Shasta to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to the Grand Canyon.

The Clivus Multrum Co. of Lawrence, Mass., has installed composting toilets at sites that include the McDowell Preserve hiking area in Scottsdale, Ariz., and an outdoor learning center on Washington’s Bainbridge Island. New York’s Bronx Zoo recently unveiled “Eco-Restrooms” designed by Clivus Multrum with 18 toilet fixtures that can accommodate a half-million visitors a year. The toilets use 3 ounces of water per flush but rely on composting rather than sewage disposal.

Back at the Michigan campground, the buildings are part of the state’s Department of Natural Resources’ Green Initiatives program, which promotes environmentally friendly practices.

Other initiatives include cutting back on mowing at certain locations, increasing recycling and using biodiesel fuel.

The $750,000 cost of the new toilet-shower building — including tearing down its 50-year-old predecessor, installing utility upgrades and winter construction — was paid for by federal and state grants.

The building planned for Otsego Lake State Park will be smaller than the one in Grand Haven and feed runoff rainwater from the roof into a garden of native plants, says architect Ryan Brouwer of Integrated Architecture.

Randy Pease, also an architect at the firm, says another special feature of the new toilet-shower buildings in the state park system is the high degree of accessibility for disabled users.

The facilities will be 85 percent to 90 percent accessible, “far, far exceeding” the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, he says.

DNR officials estimate that the Grand Haven building will use about 40 percent less water and require significantly less electricity than the building it replaced.