Alaska Seaplanes customers and workers have a porta-potty to use when nature calls. That’s an improvement.
They’ve been holding it since November, when the Wings of Alaska terminal, which housed the airport’s only year-round, public restroom, started closing between flights.
Seaplanes customer service representative Michael Fullerton spent the winter delivering the bad news to his customers, directing them to the “great outdoors” for relief, or else driving them into town.
“The most unfortunate thing outside of the inconvenience, is often times it’s people’s first impressions,” Fullerton said. “After traveling, they have to use the facility. They come to us and say ‘Hey, where can I use the bathroom?’ and their first impression of Haines is ‘Go squat in the woods’ and that’s not ideal.”
Service agent Keri Ewing said staff timed their bathroom breaks to coincide with trips to town to deliver mail. Customers weren’t always so lucky. They were sometimes told they could use the Wings terminal, if it was open.
A lease agreement between the State of Alaska’s Department of Transportation and a parent company to Wings stipulates a restroom must be available for public use in the terminal, but that only applied to when the terminal was open, said Lyn Campbell, DOT’s leasing chief in Southeast.
Wings of Alaska officials did not return phone calls this week, but the Juneau Empire reported Monday that the airline had stopped operating. The closure apparently triggered the delivery of the outhouse last week.
“It’s being delivered as we speak and it’s not glamorous by any means, there aren’t any seat warmers, but we’ll have a facility for our passengers and our employees to use,” Seaplanes general manager Carl Ramseth said.
The Seaplanes building went up about six years ago, equipped only with a surface holding tank attached to the building’s exterior. That arrangement worked in summer. In the winter, workers bundled up and hoofed it to the terminal next door.
Haines is one of only a few smaller airports in Alaska that have public toilets, according to information Campbell provided. A 2015 state report showed 144 of the 176 regional and community airports are without restrooms.
Campbell said on the scale of what’s important when it comes to using federal money to pay for infrastructure, public bathrooms come at the bottom of the list.
“I totally agree with people saying a restroom is pretty important, but before you even get to a restroom there’s some infrastructure that has to be provided, a good runway, good lighting, an apron with tie downs, fuel,” Campbell said.
While DOT has other priorities, federal OSHA appears to require a potty on site.
Heather Beaty, a state Department of Labor spokesperson, this week cited a section in the Code of Federal Regulations regarding bathrooms.
“The sanitation standard 29 CFR 1910.141(c) requires employers to provide toilet facilities based on number of employees and their gender,” the regulation states. “Each lavatory shall be provided with hot and cold running water, or tepid running water. Hand soap or similar cleansing agents shall be provided as well as individual hand towels.”
At least one bathroom is required for a company that employs between 1 and 15 people, according to Beaty’s information.