Coronavirus and open-space restrooms
What you need to know (but didn’t want to ask)
Not to be indelicate, but if you’re going to exercise at an open-space park, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to have to use a restroom while you’re there. If those facilities are a little scary for you even in normal times, they could seem terrifying now, during the coronavirus pandemic.
But if you need one, you probably can’t wait until you get home. So how do they clean those things, anyway? And how often are they cleaned?
To answer those questions, we started with Mary Ann Bonnell, visitor services manager for Jeffco Open Space. She oversees a system that attracts an average of 7 million visitors annually, but even she put on gloves and a bandana mask last Sunday
to pitch in on restroom duty.
Jeffco crews are cleaning restrooms more frequently than normal — up to three times a day at the busiest parks on weekends — because of the pandemic. They are using spray disinfectants that kill the coronavirus. But each cleaning mission takes more time than you might imagine, so Bonnell asks for your patience if you get to a restroom and it is closed for cleaning.
“Our biggest challenge is impatient people who need to go to the bathroom,” Bonnell said. “When you use a (disinfectant) product and you spray it on a surface, in most cases it needs about 10 minutes to do the job of killing whatever it is you’re trying to kill. That’s called ‘dwell time.’ If you don’t obey the dwell time, you’re not using the product properly, and it’s not going to be able to do the job it’s designed to do, which is kill the virus. We’ve had visitors barge into the restroom, swear at our workers, demand access to the bathroom. We have had some people really poorly treated by visitors as they’re trying to clean a restroom properly.”
Al Hardy, recreation and facilities manager for Boulder County Parks and
Open Space, said protocols there are very similar.
“We’re cleaning and disinfecting our restrooms daily,” Hardy said. “We have staff on seven days a week now, and we’re trying to add more disinfecting. We use a separate disinfectant to do the cleaning and wipe things down, then follow that with an EPA-approved disinfectant spray for use against the SARS and (coronavirus). And we’re trying to spray areas down where people are most likely to touch — the door, handles on the doors, then inside the restroom — grab bars, the TP holder, the riser and the seat. We also have hand sanitizer in our restrooms, so we wipe those (dispensers) down also.”
Douglas County Open Space doesn’t have restroom facilities, but it does have portable toilets provided by United Site Services, which says it has added “medical grade” disinfecting spray to its cleaning protocols and is equipping the employees who are conducting cleaning operations with personal protective equipment. Douglas County spokeswoman Wendy Holmes said open-space personnel are inspecting units daily to make sure they have been cleaned and properly maintained on schedule.
Arapahoe County open spaces do have restroom buildings, but they close for the winter and are not yet open. “Based on our monitoring of trail and trailhead use, we are working with our custodial contractor to properly clean and sanitize our portable restrooms on a regular basis,” said spokeswoman Lizzie Mayer.
When it comes to state parks, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman Jason Clay said, “Each park is cleaning and sanitizing multiple times per day. Products and protocols are set to fit individual park needs based on visitation and staffing.”
In Jeffco, keep in mind most open-space restrooms do not have running water or hand sanitizer. Jeffco employees who clean bathrooms are required to bring water and soap with them so they can wash their hands thoroughly, and Bonnell recommends park users do the same.
“That is much better than hand sanitizer, because the detergent destroys the outer membrane of the virus,” Bonnell said. “We prefer — and we’ve required — employees to have that traveling hand-washing station over hand sanitizer, because that is safer for the employee.”
Bonnell got to share that idea with a visitor last Sunday.
“After I finished cleaning a restroom I went over to my truck and I was washing my hands with my portable hand-washing station,” Bonnell said. “A visitor came over and said, ‘Hey, that’s kind of cool. I should do that, too.’ I said, ‘You definitely should do this. This is really easy to set up.’ We’re trying to set that example for our visitors, because a lot of people don’t think about bringing a hand-washing station with them. It’s probably not anything anyone’s ever thought about — until this situation.”
Especially since a disinfected restroom might not stay that way for long, Bonnell warns.
“It only takes one visitor to destroy a bathroom,” Bonnell said. “You can have a nice clean bathroom, and the very next visitor can go in and make it a problem.”
“It only takes one visitor to destroy a bathroom. You can have a nice clean bathroom, and the very next visitor can go in and make it a problem.” Mary Ann Bonnell, visitor services manager for Jeffco Open Space