Elkhart County Parks is adding new restrooms with pandemic funds

Sometimes when you are out in nature, nature calls. Elkhart County Parks celebrated some new restrooms Friday with a toilet paper cutting ceremony.

The project added four new sanitary toilets and 11 new latrines throughout the county park system. The county funded the project with $4 million in pandemic American Rescue Plan grants.

“A latrine is basically an outhouse, but these are fancy outhouses,” said Elkhart County Parks Director Ronda DeCaire. “Hopefully reduce the smell, no more brown wooden walls, no more rotting wood and a door that locks.”

DeCaire said $4 million seems like a lot for bathrooms, but some have been made accessible to people with disabilities and built on concrete slabs with newly paved sidewalks and parking spaces. And engineering efforts have been made to replace the holding tanks under the toilets.

DeCaire, her staff and some elected officials invited reporters to Ox Bow Park near the Fishermen’s Shelter on Friday to celebrate the completion of the project. The 200-acre park, located about halfway between Elkhart and Goshen, attracts about 250,000 visitors annually.

Of course there was some bathroom humor. For refreshment, DeCaire offered cans of urine-colored Mello Yello and some irregularly shaped chocolate-covered donuts. For the ceremony, they used toilet paper instead of ribbons.

But seriously, DeCaire said the new toilets were eligible for federal money because they would also protect water resources. She said when park staff tried to empty the storage tanks in recent years, they were filled only with solids, meaning the liquids leaked into groundwater and the Elkhart River.