Anyone who’s managed a busy national park during a prolonged government shutdown has worried about the poop.
When Congress fails to fund the National Park Service and other federal agencies, the parks must close many of their buildings — even if the president decides to keep the gates open. So a lot of bathrooms remain locked or inaccessible, or get cleaned only occasionally by a skeleton staff.
Visitors understand park services will be limited. Yet nature still calls.
“There are toilet paper farms that pop up behind buildings,” recalled Jim Schaberl, the former head of natural and cultural resources at Shenandoah National Park, who worked through the government shutdown nearly seven years ago. “It’s very unsanitary when you have that volume of people. The back side of those buildings was a real mess to clean up.”
With the shutdown now in its second week, the Trump administration continues to keep the national parks open to visitors and campers, even though park system funding has lapsed. Trump made the same decision during his first presidency, opting not to close the parks when he caused a 35-day shutdown over border wall funding in 2018 and 2019. The policy is legally questionable and requires some accounting tricks to pull off.
