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- Newsgroups: rec.backcountry
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!news.service.uci.edu!unogate!stgprao
- From: stgprao@st.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini)
- Subject: Re: Long-term cave exploration - waste disposal?
- Message-ID: <1992Nov20.181044.27689@unocal.com>
- Sender: news@unocal.com (Unocal USENET News)
- Organization: Unocal Corporation
- References: <9211191907.AA03650@cs.utexas.edu>
- Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 18:10:44 GMT
- Lines: 20
-
- In article <9211191907.AA03650@cs.utexas.edu> wmartin@STL-06SIMA.ARMY.MIL (Will Martin) writes:
- >But one aspect was completely avoided, and I wonder what people on this
- >group can tell me about it: waste disposal during this long-term
- >exploration. It's not like wilderness -- you can't dig a hole somewhere
- >for a latrine, or find a "safe" spot to urinate. I would at first
- >assume they had some sort of chemical toilet facility, like astronaut
- >waste bags or something, to use and then pack out all the waste, but
- >the show DID address the difficulty of getting their backpacks through
- >the winding maze of passageways on the way in, and it sure seemed to me
- >that they just simply could not pack out all the waste water generated
- >by this multi-person team over a week-plus period. (They didn't have to
- >pack *in* water, since they could use the cave water, so they'd have a
- >vast amount greater weight to pack *out* if they had to bring out all
- >the waste water.) [I wouldn't think they'd even have containers to hold
- >it all!]
- >
- >So how did they manage?
-
- Same reason Mt. Everest and other places in Nepal have become trash heaps.
- (Although the problem has been recognized and is improving.)
-