All,
In addition to the Lechuguilla contamination article in the Journal of Cave and Karst Studies, there was also a follow up article questioning some of the original techniques and whether they demonstrated contamination. The real problem appeared to be plastic hosing in the pools that was leading to microbial growth, these were removed and replaced by the park with tubing that did not support such growth.
I remember that, but I also remember something was said about some sort of fecal coliform. Was the subject ever brought up that maybe the waste dumps could have contributed? Someone stepped insomething they shouldnt have, then took their boot off with with the same hand that the scooped water/ held hoes which sucked water?
The original posting regarding the urine issue in Lech was only posted a couple of months ago - this has been an issue for the park for almost two decades, so I doubt it will be resolved in a fairly short timeframe.
Hm more like 2 days ago...In this thread..Sorry about that again, I should have seen this thread, but I didnt.
quote]
None of the options proposed by posters was technically feasible or chemically possible. Nonetheless, all ideas are welcome.[/quote]
How about just not doing it? That seems feasible enough. In this thread there are afew people that said they carried their own waste out. I can imagine it isnt very pleasent hauling 20lbs of your own pee out of a cave, but I think it would be worth the discomfort instead of damageing the caev by dumping it.
I was shocked and I still am shocked by this practice. It seems to go against all of the conservation and caving standards that most of the caving comunity abides by.
Just doing alittle math her, lets just say that each person produces 2 gallons every 7 days under ground, multiply that by 5-12 people on each trip and 9 aproved expiditions this year...The is around 215 GALLONS per year of urine dumped it to a cave that is supposedly one of the most protected caves in the world?
This just isnt adding up for me.
Has the idea ever been tossed around about just extending each expidition by one day. That one day could be used for the extra time it would take to haul the larger loads out of the cave? This doesnt seem like a very complicated problem to me, but it does seem like a problem that should have been adressed before thousands of gallons of liquid waste was dumped into the cave.
-Jeremy Anderson