NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Park and Recreation Structures

IF ATTRACTIVE and wholesome conditions are to obtain in a picnic area, receptacles for refuse must be provided. Not only should these facilities be of a highly practical nature, but they should be so abundantly provided that their very convenience induces people to use them.

Refuse receptacles may be of several kinds. It is possible, of course, to distribute through the picnic area garbage cans of commercial type, or oil drums converted to that purpose. However these may be painted, they are unsightly and subject to abuses by picnickers whose ideas of fun have perpetually a Hallowe'en tinge. They attract vermin and animals and are not proof against their depredations. They are tolerable only if regular and frequent collections of their accumulations are made.

If these facilities are placed underground, certain features may be adopted which overcome many of the deficiencies of the surface type. They are hidden from view. They can be more positively flyproof. They are less an invitation to the pranksters and can be made safe from the raids of animals. In permanent locations the walls of the pit are lined with planking or masonry, and the bottom is often undertiled to prevent the accumulation of moisture. The cover of the pit is best designed as a kind of "trap door within a trap door", so fashioned that by opening the inner door garbage may be dropped into the receptacle, and by opening the larger door the receptacle may be removed from the pit for emptying. The feeding door should be of restricted size and so placed that there is no possibility of the dropped refuse missing the receptacle and fouling the pit. Operation of this door by a self-closing foot lever is recommended for greater convenience and cleanliness. If the cover is of wood, it is subject to shrinkage and warp, which soon renders the pit accessible to flies and even small animals. On the other hand, short of malicious abuse, a heavy sheet metal cover will remain flytight indefinitely.

Another subsurface receptacle is a pit without any removable container. Noncombustibles are dropped into the pit itself. Its bottom is sometimes underlaid with broken rock or gravel as a leaching bed for the moisture from any garbage dropped contrary to regulations. If the soil is such that the vertical wall of the excavation will crumble, some form of light bracing or shoring of rough lumber is provided. The pit is floored over at a level about six inches below grade. Over an opening therein is set some form of tight-jointed receiving device. The remainder of the plank top is covered with soil. When the pit has filled almost to grade, the cover is removed intact to another pit in a new location, and the old hole is filled to grade with earth.

The receiving device of a pit of this type may be the aforementioned self-closing trap door, or it may be some raised boxlike or cylindrical form. In any event, it must prevent flies from entering the pit. In order to hold the bulk of the accumulation to a minimum, the public must be schooled to burn waste paper, cartons, and other combustibles in the picnic fireplaces. This will require signs which state regulations and urge compliance with them.

In some picnic areas it is a practice to provide in place of waste containers a small incinerator for public use usually an oversized picnic fireplace—and to hope that picnickers will conscientiously burn in this their rubbish, wet and dry. This is usually a hope unfulfilled, and between the unregenerate who laugh at regulations, and the uninformed who seem to attribute to the incinerator a kind of human intelligence beyond their own, the gadget and the picnic area itself are rather constantly in an unpleasant state of sanitative deficiency. It is recommended that the alchemy of converting melon rinds and pop bottles into smoke be squarely acknowledged as worthy of the ministrations of a garbage man of talent, on the park pay roll at a prevailing wage scaled to his professional attainments.

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