Eighty-three-year-old Ralph Deckett stood outside the Curt Gowdy State Park visitor center, broom in hand. Now retired from the FBI, Deckett spends much of his time looking after museums and recreation sites like Curt Gowdy, where he had been volunteering since the beginning of July.
“We just try to keep it nice, the best we can around here. It’s amazing how people can trash out a place,” Deckett said.
And Deckett is not alone. Driving around the park, Assistant Superintendent Darrell Richardson told me Curt Gowdy depends on volunteers like Deckett.
“Our volunteer program is one of the biggest things we have going for us around here,” Richardson said.
During the summer, Richardson said, Curt Gowdy’s campsites are full. The trails are well trafficked. And for many people, disposables are part of the outdoor experience.
“It’s primarily paper, you know, people come camping and they’re going to have paper and cardboard,” Richardson said. “And then there’s a lot of cans, and I’m sure plastic bottles because everybody’s all into drinking bottled water anymore.”
Curt Gowdy employs only two full-time staff and two part-time staff. About 20 volunteers and a few seasonal workers do the rest of the work picking up trash. To pay for that help, state parks use entrance fees and Wyoming’s general fund. According to Curt Gowdy Superintendent Bill Conner, waste disposal takes up about ten percent of the park’s budget.
Each week, he said, a private company empties twenty dumpsters spread across the park and drops the waste in Cheyenne’s landfill. Richardson said he is not aware of any entities that could transport recycling from Curt Gowdy.
“Nobody services this area,” Richardson said. “It would be something we’d have to collect ourselves and take it to town or take it to the landfill. I don’t even know if the landfill even has recycle boxes or anything.”
Richardson said, if there was a way to have recycling hauled away, he would put bins around the park. But Curt Gowdy is nearly 30 miles from Cheyenne and it is hard to take advantage of the city’s services.
You would think recycling would be easy for a park situated inside a town. The location has not helped Kevin Skates, the superintendent of Wyoming’s busiest state park in the middle of Thermopolis. “Right now, we are not recycling at all,” Skates said.
Since the town of Thermopolis lacks a recycling program, so does Hot Springs State Park.
Meanwhile, Grand Teton National Park is trying to deliver its waste to Teton County’s transfer station themselves. And they’re trying to send less of it to the landfill. Sustainability Coordinator Margaret Wilson said, for a long time, Grand Teton was like most state parks – they didn’t have money or staff to devote to recycling. Then they joined the Zero Landfill Initiative – a pilot project to try and divert most of the waste generated inside national parks. Wilson said part of that is educating tourists.
To read the full story, visit http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/can-state-parks-keep-waste-out-landfills.