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Environment Specialist John Hollenhorst reporting
Lake Powell is foul no more!
In the mid-1990s, Utah's favorite recreation destination was plagued with beach closures because of dirty germs.
But we're now wrapping up the third nearly clean year in a row.
To put it simply, and perhaps indelicately, they're winning the "War on Poop".
Human waste was the problem. But human behavior has changed, from the very, very gross, to something a bit more acceptable.
For all its pristine beauty, Lake Powell acquired a dirty nickname a few years ago -- Lake Foul.
Part of the reason: fecal bacteria in the water. Back in 1995, officials were shocked by how many beaches had to be closed for health reasons.
"There was a lot of concern about the closures. I mean, if you have 11 closures in one year in a national recreation area, it gets pretty important," says William Moeller, chairman of the Lake Powell Technical Advisory Committee.
With fecal bacteria, there was never much doubt where to place the blame.
"And it's coming from mammals. And since it's beaches, that means it's coming from human beings," Moeller says.
In other words, poop, in all the wrong places! In the bushes. On the beaches. Buried in the sand. Dumped overboard.
So government agencies launched an educational campaign and wrote new rules. Mandatory porta-potties for anyone staying overnight. A total ban on boat toilets being dumped into the lake.
They built new facilities, including floating toilets and boat-toilet pump-out stations.
In the last three years, only one beach had to be closed due to germs.
"We think the reason we had the problem in Oak Canyon last year is that a houseboat pulled the plug. That was reported, but we weren't able to find who that was ... The overall picture is a cleaner lake. A much cleaner lake," Moeller says.
Officials are considering closing one loophole.
They may extend the porta-potty requirement to include visitors who don't stay overnight. That's a significant percentage of the 35,000 visitors on a typical busy day.
"It's true that 15 percent of those 35,000 don't have porta-potties. But before this program started four or five years ago, none of them did," Moeller says.
Lake Powell's level has been dropping lately. But officials don't believe that has played much of a role in solving the problem.
More important they say, is that the boating public got the message, and most people changed their behavior.
