Three years ago, I used the space in this column to write about how restroom vandalism was spiraling out of control, costing portable sanitation providers thousands of dollars every year in replacement parts and worker hours to repair and clean up damaged units.
By January 2007, it seemed like restroom vandalism was becoming a popular sport, especially among teens and college students, who brazenly posted videos of their destruction on the Web site, www.youtube.com. At that time, you could type the words “portable restroom,” “portable toilet’’ or “portapotty’’ in the search field at the Web site and see young people smashing, mashing, toppling, burning and blowing up restrooms from coast to coast.
Nothing has changed. If you take another look today, you’ll see even more explosive videos, showing kids using pipe bombs to obliterate restrooms. They have no regard for the damage they’re causing, typically stopping to celebrate their homemade pyrotechnics on camera. These pranksters are oblivious to the dangers of their stunts and the financial losses the owners of the restrooms incur.
ECONOMIC ISSUE
On these videos, you can often clearly see the faces of the perpetrators. You can see the name of the restroom contractor on the unit stickers. And if the authorities wanted to, they could probably track down the vandals who posted the video to YouTube. Yet with all that evidence, I haven’t heard of many vandals being prosecuted for this type of senseless property damage.
Well, the portable restroom operators of North Carolina are trying to change that. The North Carolina Portable Toilet and Pumper Groups spent the past year lobbying for legislation that will strengthen property damage laws as they pertain to portable sanitation businesses.
Last month, a state statute approved by the North Carolina legislature went into effect, specifically addressing damage to restrooms and liquid waste vacuum trucks. It raises the penalty for restroom vandalism from a Class 2 to Class 1 misdemeanor. Restroom contractors hope the law raises awareness that it’s not OK to think of restroom vandalism as a joke; and conveys that the damage is especially crippling to an industry suffering through a lengthy economic recession.
“The way the economy is now, our companies cannot continue to sit back and absorb these costs and let people have the attitude that this is just the portable sanitation business and it’s just the way it is,’’ says an exasperated Carey Mack, operations manager for Raleigh-based Readilite & Barricade Inc. Mack — whose company has an inventory of 4,000 restrooms — says that everyone from the vandals to legislators to law enforcement needs to understand that portable restrooms are a valuable tool for companies, not the butt of a joke.
