The tundra grass is beginning to brown and splashes of red and orange are appearing across the country, but there’s still time to enjoy berry picking and even catch some sockeyes at Salmon Lake about 40 miles outside of Nome.
Should Alaskans find themselves at the lake’s campground, run by the Bureau of Land Management, they may find themselves feeling especially—relieved—thanks to the work of BLM engineer Rod Moretz, who spent the summer building up the campground’s new outhouse, a prefabricated Romtec vault toilet.
“It’s a concrete toilet, basically,” Mortz said. “It’s probably about 140,000 pounds now that it’s complete. We put the job out for contract, and the bids came in really high, so they just came back and said, well, let’s see if we can do it in-house for cheaper.”
Building it “in-house” took longer than expected. Materials were purchased about three years ago and sat in storage in Nome. With the old toilet past its serviceable life and often experiencing overflow due to snowmelt, this summer BLM moved ahead with the project, demolishing the old wooden outhouse and removing the steel tank underneath. Moretz said local Nome contractors poured a concrete pad and he installed the new unisex vault toilet.
Moretz said it’s designed to stay clean and welcoming without needing constant upkeep.
“It has the SST technology involved, which is for Sweet Smelling Toilet technology, which is kind of like a chimney,” he described. “Basically your building is air-tight, and it has one air vent the same size as the air vent for the chimney stack, so that air comes into the building through the vent, down the riser of the toilet seat, through the vault and then up out the stack. So basically you don’t have any odors in the vault toilet.”
While the new outhouse is just one small change for visitors to Salmon Lake, local BLM coordinator Tom Sparks says it’s just the latest addition to a unique BLM campground that dates back to 1965.
“It’s nice to see the support that BLM’s given to the community of Nome,” Sparks said. “It’s the only campground that [BLM has] in northwest Alaska, it’s the only [BLM] campground outside of the Dalton Highway, and it’s something that I have a lot of positive comments from the public. So it’s good that we’ve been able to upgrade that facility.”
The new structure is also wheelchair accessible—thanks to a new smoothly graded entrance. The campground now includes six campsites (each with a fire ring and picnic table), a boat launch, and two bear-proof trash cans.
