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Starting this year, floaters are now required to carry with them something they have always been able to leave behind — their excrement.

“This is one of the most significant natural resource protection moves we’ve done in the West in a long time,� said Chris Freistadt, the lead recreation river ranger on the Smith River for FWP. “This is a huge deal that we are moving to stop digging holes in all of these camps.�

According to FWP, the Smith River corridor was the only permitted river in the lower 48 that did not require people to pack out human waste.

The Smith River is unique and alluring to recreationists for its beauty, geology, wildlife and fishing. That appeal has caused river managers to adopt more sustainable management approaches as more and more people float the river every year.

In 2023, a total of 6,360 users floated the river, the second-highest total of users in a float season ever on the river. An environmental assessment published by FWP says the agency has dug 1,200 pit latrines since 1983.

“The reason we have to do this is just the sheer natural and cultural resource impacts from having latrines in boat camps,� Colin Maas, Smith River State Park manager, said. �The fact that we have to dig multiple toilets a year and the lack of space in some of these locations, it was just the right thing to do for the resource.�

Up until this month every step in the policy transition was complete except one final task, the decommissioning and removal of the 52 pit latrines in boat camps along the river.

In early April, Lee Newspapers joined personnel from the U.S Forest Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and volunteers from the Montana Vet Program on a five-day trip down the river to remove and raft out the latrines, officially ushering in the new era of recreational management on the river.

Moving toward more management

It’s been 40 years since the first pit latrine was dug on the Smith River and they have been at risk of removal before.

Recreational management of the Smith unofficially began in 1983 when FWP and the Forest Service started installing pit toilets and designated previously unofficial boat camps along the river.

As recreational floating became more popular in those days, the impact on the roughly 80% of private lands that make up the river corridor also increased.

Much of the way the river is managed now did not exist back then. The only requirement for floaters was to sign a voluntary floater information form and drop it in a box at Camp Baker before launching so the agency could gauge use on the river

The Smith River Management Act passed by the 1989 Legislature officially gave the state recreation management authority over the river and its private and commercial users.

This act paved the way for managing the river the way it is today with a fee-use system and limited entry permitting.

In 2007 the agency convened a citizen advisory committee tasked with drafting recommendations for the decennial management plan update. Among other issues, the hot topics at the time were banning floater groups from bringing pets and a human waste pack-out requirement.

"It's a narrow corridor with limited space and hard, rocky ground," Ed Tinsley, a member of that advisory group, said "Frankly, in some of the boat camps, they're running out of room for those things. And the river rangers should spend more time on the river checking fishing permits and that kind of thing instead of digging latrines and pits."

In the end, the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission approved the pet ban but did not force the human-waste pack out requirement in 2009.

Fast forward to 2021 when the river’s management plan was again revisited and the comments made by Tinsley 12 years prior ring truer than ever before.

Skyrocketing demand to float the river as the COVID-19 pandemic forced people out of doors and forced the river’s managers to make drastic changes.

In 2011, about 5,600 people applied for a permit. In 2021, an unprecedented surge pushed applications over 15,000. This year saw 12,452 permit applications, still well above the long-term average.

: banning overnight camping at Camp Baker, an overhaul of the permit lottery system, cultural and natural resource damage protection and a human waste pack-out requirement.

The need for latrine removal

In his two decades as Smith River State Park manager, Colin Maas has seen first-hand the natural resource impacts and unsustainability of digging latrines at each boat camp.

“This change is historic,� Maas said. “And it's just the right thing to conserve the resource.�

The environmental assessment that accompanied the 2021 Smith River management plan update read: “The current system of pit latrines is not sustainable into the future. Few suitable locations exist for new latrines, and existing latrines can cause offensive sights and odors. The continued use of pit latrines is a potential human, fishery and river health concern.�

The report went on to list the impacts caused by continued use of latrines including:

• Health and sanitation concerns
• Groundwater quality concerns
• Soil and vegetative disturbances
• Improper disposal of trash in latrines
• Decreasing availability of suitable locations for digging new pits
• Natural and cultural resource impacts
• Staff time and labor required to dig latrines

“So literally in some of these camps, just based on the size of the boat camp and the topography, we started to run out of space,� Maas said. “Some of these sites we ended up having to dig into old pits. And a lot of times we didn't know we were digging at old pits until we run into some evidence that it was an old pit.�

Both Freistadt and Maas agreed it was time to move the Smith River in line with river-use policies in effect across the West and change the culture of river users.

“For a lot of Montanans, this is going to be something that's new, and maybe a little bit scary for him,� Maas said. “But in the world of river recreation, it's not a new thing. All other rivers in the West that are similar to the Smith River began requiring human waste pack-out decades ago.�

“It's not just the human waste that we're talking about, it's creating a culture where people are following the principles of leaving no trace,� Freistadt, the lead recreation river ranger, said. “Yeah, we're removing our human waste. But it also harbors this culture in river users that everything makes an impact that we leave within the corridor.�

Latrine removal operation

The logistical planning for the latrine removal operation was in the works for the entirety of Freistadt’s three years as the lead river ranger on the Smith River.

Due to the backcountry nature of the river and limited road access, officials quickly realized they would need to get creative on getting the latrines out. The required manpower was also a topic of concern in planning.

“There were a lot of ideas thrown out, whether it was using aircraft or dropping different stages of toilets at private land spots,� Freistadt said. “We kind of just simplified it this year and decided that we've got the boats, we just need to get some volunteers together and figure out how to isolate the dirtiness of the human waste. Then just boat them out.�

So FWP reached out to Montana Vet Program, who has volunteered on Smith River work trips in the past. They enthusiastically hopped on board.

Additionally, Freistadt had concerns if the elements would cooperate with the project. “The Smith is kind of difficult to plan for these sorts of things just with low flows and the early season and the way that we get our user traffic throughout the season.�

The hands-on process to remove the latrines started with detaching the toilet pedestal from its wooden base. The wooden base was then cut into pieces and buried in the latrine pit.

Back at the rafts, the decommissioned pedestals were stacked together and wrapped in tarps for consolidation and to minimize the risk of contamination. From there they were secured to the rafts and it was off to the next boat camp.

“It’s not a clean job, and that’s fine,� Freistadt said. “But it could have been a lot dirtier.�

The crew also removed the old latrine signs and replaced some of them with privacy screening signs in camps that don’t have obvious places to set up a portable toilet.

Montana Vet Program

Montana Vet Program is a nonprofit that

“We use Montana as the therapist, basically,� said Bryon Gustafson, social media manager and partnership specialist for MVP.

The organization was founded seven years ago by three U.S. Marine veterans: Luke Urick, Scott Moss and Joe Miller, who all live in Montana

“The idea was that a lot of the veteran organizations out there offer reprieve,� Gustafson said. “So you can go out fishing, you can go out hunting, you can go on a little vacation. But not many of them offer tools to actually help heal.�

So the organization hosts four veteran-led trips each summer, two in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and two on the Smith River. Through exposure to wild places and fireside chats the organization works to help veterans heal and find purpose.

“When a veteran leaves us, they'll know how to be in the outdoors,� Gustafson said. “And they'll also know some coping mechanisms for whatever mental things they may be going through, whether they deployed or not, almost every veteran has some kind of trauma they're working through.�

Typically the group works with veterans from recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have had some Vietnam veterans participate.

In Marine sniper school, candidates carry a 75-pound rock or bag of sand, known as a “pig egg,� for the sole purpose of teaching suffering.

In honor of that tradition and to keep the memories of fallen soldiers in mind, Montana Vet Program carries their own “pig egg� on all their trips made from a sandbag filled with the dog tags of 7,054 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The two annual Smith River trips the group organizes are sanctioned by FWP. As a way to give back to the agency and provide participants with a productive outlet, the group has started incorporating volunteer service work as a part of their trips.

In the past the group has dug countless new latrine pits, cleaned up boat camps and bucked up fallen hazard trees for later floaters to use as firewood.

“What ends up happening is a lot of veterans end up just sitting on the couch when they get out of the service. You know, there's a suicide problem, there's a mental health problem and there's also an obesity problem with veterans,� Gustafson said. “So as veterans had a mission while they were in, we want them to have a new mission and what better mission than help out these public lands that we fought for.�

The SCAT machine

Although floaters are now required to pack out their waste, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Park isn’t totally out of the human waste business.

State officials installed a SCAT (Sanitizing Containers with Alternative Technology) machine last year to dispose of human waste at the Eden Bridge takeout as they implemented the new rules for floaters.

The machine is a dumping and cleaning station for portable toilets.

"The machine, through various cycles and washing nozzles, produces a semi-high pressure, high-volume wash that removes the waste from the portable toilet, rinses the toilet inside and out, and slurries the waste into a septic system-ready form," according to the company's website. "It then discharges the waste into the septic system and performs a self-rinse cycle that leaves the machine ready for the next use."

The state has approved eight different types of portable toilets for use by floaters. They range in price from $30 to over $1,000 and there are some do-it-yourself options. It’s important floaters use only these approved toilets because of compatibility with the SCAT machine.

The state also published resources for floaters on its website like a , and .

Going forward

After spending years working and recreating on rivers across the west, Freistadt, a Montana native, considers the Smith River his home river. He looks forward to what the removal of pit latrines means for his team of river rangers and the river itself.

“We're gonna have to continue to go to these sites where we've dug latrine after latrine for the past 40 years and do a lot of maintenance,� Freistadt said. “These kind of potholes will appear and we will start to fill them in and figure out how to fix some of that resource damage that's happened there�

But now that river rangers will no longer spend a majority of their time digging latrines, it allows them more time to educate floaters and work with with private landowners along the river.

“We are now going to continue moving on to important resource issues that we just haven't had time to do,� Freistadt said. “So it's an exciting time to kind of expand the program into something getting out to the public a little bit more by doing that education piece.�

“We also maintain all the other general things in the campsite like tie-off posts, campfire rings and signposts,� Freistadt said. “We will try to do some bank stabilization and fix campsite approaches.�

Maas, the park manager, can see the future benefits of the policy change play out in his head — things like a reduction in the natural resource impacts, a reduction in possible water contamination and a minimizing of the impacts to private land in the corridor.

“People just need to remember and realize that it's their public land,� Maas said. “Don't always just rely on the land management agencies to take care of your public land and the special places like the Smith River. It's also your duty and your responsibility to be a steward and to do the right thing.�

Freistadt is encouraged by how he sees this “home river� managed and is hopeful about its future.

“The Smith River is a special place for me,� Freistadt said. “Not just because it's a beautiful place, but it is a really good example of using our water resource in a manner that's responsible, and that puts the public in that resource so that they can make their own decisions about why they enjoy it as well.�