Liquids filter through the soil and collect in a “soak hole,” a miniature leach field like those used in rural septic systems. When flushed, liquid and solid waste products in the toilet bowl drop onto a rearward-slanting grate covered with straw, topsoil and oodles of ravenous red wigglers. People who use the loo recharge the water supply in the toilet bowl with the water they use to wash their hands. The toilet at West Virginia’s Camp Creek State Park and Forest is bright and airy inside - but more important, it’s free of flies and doesn’t stink like an ordinary pit toilet. Stephen Mecca, a Providence College physicist, pioneered the toilets’ design when he invented what he calls the “microflush valve.” Conventional toilets use gallons of water for each use microflush toilets use just 8 ounces. We don’t usually get positive comments about any kind of restroom facility, let alone outhouses.” “Guests who have used them have made many positive comments about them,” says Frank Ratcliffe, the superintendent at Camp Creek. At Camp Creek State Park and Forest in West Virginia, the toilets are giving campers and backpackers the unfamiliar experience of breathing fresh air while visiting a public privy. In Ghana, for example, wiggler-powered toilets helped eradicate dracunculiasis, a parasite-generated disease that once afflicted hundreds of thousands. The technology, employed in developing countries for almost a decade, has proven a boon to public health. Some clever folks have harnessed this ability and are building privies as clean as they are green. They gobble up organic material and turn it into rich topsoil. Stinky, fly-infested pit toilets might someday disappear from America’s campgrounds, thanks to the dietary proclivities of a humble little worm.
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