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Green Campground Restroom Serves As Prototype
GRAND HAVEN, MI (AP) - When nature calls, campers at Grand Haven State Park
can now go “green” at a new, environmentally friendly toilet-shower building
that is the first of its kind in the state park system.
Construction on a similar facility at Otsego Lake State Park near Gaylord
is scheduled to begin this fall. Officials hope to eventually replace all the
restrooms
at Michigan’s 97 state parks and recreation areas with buildings like
the one in Grand Haven, which opened for use May 5.
“
This is the first of its kind, so we kind of get to be the ones to test it out,” says
Patrick Whalen, supervisor of Grand Haven State Park.
The water- and energy-efficient product, designed by Grand Rapids-based Integrated
Architecture LLC, features natural daytime lighting, artificial nighttime lighting
triggered by occupancy sensors, timer-controlled showers with on-demand water
heaters and reduced-flow shower heads, and low-flow toilets and urinals.
A small array of solar panels on the roof supplements the electricity used
for the building’s ventilation system. Building materials, including
masonry, metal and wood, were selected for their long-term maintenance qualities.
A new
sanitary sewer line should mean a safer watershed.
The campground closed a couple of months early last year, right after Labor
Day, to give work crews time to demolish the previous, half-century-old toilet-shower
building and start on its replacement. The park features a large, sandy beach
alongside Lake Michigan, so construction workers battled the wind and the sand
and wintry conditions to complete the project on time.
“
It was a challenging winter for them, to say the least, to work in the environment
that we have here,” says Whalen.
The $750,000 cost of the new toilet-shower building - including tearing down
its predecessor, installing utility upgrades and winter construction - was
paid for by a federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grant and a matching
grant
from the State Park Improvement Fund.
The state fund consists of money collected at Michigan state parks for motor
vehicle permits, camping fees and concessions. The Michigan Department of Natural
Resources’ Parks and Recreation Division operates the park system.
The new campground buildings are part of the DNR’s Green Initiatives
program, which promotes environmentally friendly management practices and product
usage
at state parks, state recreation areas and state harbors. Other initiatives
now in place or previously tested include cutting back on mowing at certain
locations,
increasing recycling efforts and using biodiesel fuel in diesel-powered mowers,
tractors, bulldozers and backhoes.
The idea for updating the parks’ toilet-showers arose as the state
was planning to build a new one at Traverse City State Park that opened at
the
start of 2007 camping season, says Dan Lord, development planner for Parks
and Recreation.
Plans were drawn up last year for a more environmentally friendly toilet-shower
building at Grand Haven State Park that could accommodate the approximately
92,500 campers who stay there each year.
The flexibility built into the design will allow future versions to be larger
or smaller, for certain features to be added or trimmed and for different materials
to be incorporated into the construction. The building planned for Otsego Lake
State Park will be smaller than the one in Grand Haven and feed runoff rainwater
from the roof into a garden of native plants, says architect Ryan Brouwer of
Integrated Architecture.
“
It’s meant to be self-sufficient landscaping,” he says.
Randy Pease, also an architect at the firm, says another special feature
of the new toilet-shower buildings in the state park system is the high degree
of accessibility
for disabled users. The facilities will be 85 percent to 90 percent accessible, “far,
far exceeding” the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act
of 1990, he says.
DNR officials estimate that the Grand Haven building will use about 40 percent
less water and require significantly less electricity than the building it
replaced. Still, that equates to only about 10 campsites with electrical hookups,
so unless
campers themselves conserve more energy, there’s little chance of a significant
drop in the state parks system’s utility bills, which totaled $2.5 million
last year.
“
It’s really our visitors that we’ve got to help to educate,” says
Lord.
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