The small scale sewage facility : this dissertation is submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Diploma in Parks and Recreation [Lincoln College]

Abstract

Recent years have seen a growth in awareness within society of the rewards offered through our national parks and reserves. Society has chosen to reap these rewards through active participation in a wide spectrum of recreational pursuits ranging from casual bush walking to pitting mind and body against the challenges of our alpine regions. Paralleled with this increased level of participation has been a greater awareness by parks' and reserves' rangers that they, as the resource managers, have a two-fold responsibility to both the resource and the user. On the one hand, they must ensure that the user is adequately catered for in his or her recreational pursuits while, on the other ensuring that any resultant impact on the resource is kept within the bounds of those objectives by which its preservation and protection can be assured. The ranger in New Zealand is confronted in his job with an enormous diversity of sites in which he must determine the need for public toilet facilities. Each of these sites will introduce a combination of factors, of climate, altitude, soil, topography, access and public use; which is common only to the one particular site. This set of factors will, in turn, impose a ‘set’ of constraints on the provision of facilities within that particular site which will not apply to any other. For this reason, the adoption of a standard design for use on all sites is, though often desirable in terms of time and money, generally undesirable in terms of its effective design and operation. If the ranger is to effectively meet the needs of both the user and the resource he must be able to identify these and other less obvious constraining factors relevant to the provision of toilet facilities on a particular site. This is only possible if he has a clear understanding of, firstly, what to look for in respect to relevant site factors, and, secondly, the practical solutions to any problems they may introduce. In compiling the information contained in this paper the writer hopes to generate, or at least supplement, this understanding among ranger staff. If this can be achieved then some degree of effective provision of public toilet facilities within our national parks and reserves can be assured.