Restroom roadblock: Forest Service bathroom closures being met with Utah County aid as July 4 approaches
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- Bathrooms are closed at Tibble Fork Reservoir on Tuesday, July 1, 2025.
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- Bathrooms are closed at Tibble Fork Reservoir on Tuesday, July 1, 2025.
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- People recreate at Tibble Fork Reservoir on Tuesday, July 1, 2025.
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- Bathrooms are closed at Tibble Fork Reservoir on Tuesday, July 1, 2025.
A stinky situation is piling up for the U.S. Forest Service.
As the Fourth of July holiday approaches, several bathrooms up Utah County’s canyons are closed because they’ve reached capacity and the Forest Service is unable to pump the toilets.
The issue is the Forest Service was held up on getting a contract approved to get someone to pump the toilets due to changes at the federal level, according to Utah County Administrator Ezra Nair.
County Commissioner Skyler Beltran added via social media that Forest Service budget cuts are affecting personnel and services.
The county is stepping in to pump some of the toilets itself, including in American Fork Canyon, where Nair estimated almost half of the bathrooms were closed.
“They actually alerted us of the problem about two months ago, before things started to get really busy,” Nair said. “And we just said, ‘Let us know how we can help.’ … We have these regular monthly meetings with them just to coordinate efforts in the canyons and whatnot.”
The Forest Service did not provide an official response to a media inquiry before press deadline; however, a Forest Service official told the Daily Herald there were eight bathroom locations on the top priority list to be pumped:
- Tibble Fork Reservoir
- Mile Rock Picnic Area
- Echo Picnic Area
- Pine Hollow Trailhead
- Summit Trailhead
- Aspen Grove
- Dry Canyon Trailhead
- Three Forks Trailhead
The county coordinated with a contractor to pump some of the highest-trafficked bathrooms, but there wasn’t time on the contractor’s schedule to get them all done, Nair said.
Two bathrooms each were finished and reopened at Tibble Fork and Aspen Grove last week.
“These pumps will last about one to two months, depending on how much demand there is, and so hopefully that will give them enough time to get their contract all worked out,” Nair said.
Bathrooms remain closed in other locations in American Fork and Diamond Fork canyons. The scattered closures may have an impact on visitors traveling into nature to enjoy their holiday week.
A few people getting an early start on the holiday weekend Tuesday morning at Tibble Fork shared their initial thoughts on the issue, where two of the four bathrooms remained closed.
Lincoln, from Draper, thought it was good the county was stepping in to help pump the toilets but felt it shouldn’t have had to in the first place.
“This is a public space that our tax dollars go toward and maintaining and keeping up to date, so I feel like that’s not OK,” he said. “If a private company were providing service like that I think we’d be pretty angry.”
Eric, of Eagle Mountain, wondered if the bathrooms were deliberately closed because the Forest Service wasn’t getting funding they wanted and expressed health concerns over the bathroom closures.
Others saw the issue as more of an inconvenience.
“That’s kind of a bummer, kind of annoying,” Kevin from Saratoga Springs said. “It’d be nice if they had signs that said, ‘Hey, FYI, we’re closing these down.’ I guess that’s kind of silly that they’re not doing that. At a minimum, just notifying people better because we had no idea.”
Utah County and the Forest Service collaborate with each other on a variety of recreational issues. Most notably is Bridal Veil Falls, where each entity owns a portion of the land below the falls. Utah County is expected to complete a land swap with the Forest Service at Bridal Veil Falls to make improvements around the falls.
The county believes it’s best equipped to care for some of the local recreational areas and views the bathroom situation as evidence of that.
“It just kind of highlights the importance of local control over these areas,” Nair said. “I think with the Bridal Veil land swap, it kind of plays into that as well. We’ve got great people here locally, and honestly, if we could just hire them to work for the county rather than the feds, I think a lot of this stuff would be streamlined a lot better. But it’s OK. We’ll make it work.”
