Visitors appreciate getting back to nature at Broward County’s Everglades Holiday Park — as long as they’re not still there when nature calls.
The remote park, west of U.S. 27 on Griffin Road and known for its air boat rides and Everglades’ views, is undergoing renovation and construction projects and currently relies mostly on portable toilets to accommodate tourists.
Things backed up last weekend when at least two of the women’s toilets malfunctioned, leaving long lines of guests waiting to go. A 12-toilet trailer had to be completely shut down Sunday after a toilet foot pedal broke and the trailer flooded.
“We cannot let people come to this facility on the weekend or any day of the week and not have operable bathrooms,” Broward Commissioner Nan Rich complained. “It’s really like some kind of a third-world country and it’s just not appropriate.”
The county can’t build permanent bathrooms for the park yet because it’s waiting on permits from the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, officials said. It will probably be two years before the restrooms are done.
But potty relief has arrived, officials said.
Parks Director Dan West said another $150,000 modular trailer of portable toilets — eight on the women’s side and four on the men’s — arrived Tuesday and began operating Wednesday.
The park will also require that additional restrooms in the RV section of the park be open to all visitors, he said. There are small restrooms in the park’s main building, although one toilet that broke down there was also part of the weekend problems.
The park regularly sees about 2,700 visitors on a weekend and last year’s attendance topped 300,000.
West said he has two plumbers on standby — one checks all toilets on Friday before the weekend crush, and another is on-call during the weekend.
County Administrator Bertha Henry said the county will be more prepared for a situation like the weekend’s “double whammy” in the future.
“It’s something now we’re just a lot more cognizant of so we’ll have now a triple backup to make sure that we don’t have that problem,” she said.
lbarszewski@SunSentinel.com, 954-356-4556 or Twitter @lbarszewski