Salty Dog will be going ballistic when he returns from his Alternate JMT route and reads about Rangers searching people for their wag bag. As described in great detail on this forum, there is no Forest Order requiring the use of a wag bag. Why not?
Because a FO requires completion of NEPA (National Environmental Protection Act) and that process was never completed. Imagine if a private company just aborted the NEPA process and did whatever it wanted - there would be outrage and lawsuits. But because this was done with "good intentions" to make people responsible for their human waste, the environmentalists have looked the other way while the toilets were burned down.
What you're seeing with wag bags left behind is an environmental impact due to "noncompliance" with the packout waste alternative. These impacts were clearly identified, anticipated, and evaluated in the Environmental Assessment. That is why the preferred alternative was to rebuild the toilets - it was the most effective protection of the environment with the least environmental impacts. But then the preferred alternative was suddenly switched to wag bags, right when the EA was sent out for public comments. That was very sneaky, and again, would normally cause outrage and perhaps lawsuits. Even so, public comments were overwhelmingly in support of rebuilding the toilets. Even Sequoia-Kings Canyon management wrote a comment letter raising a lot of questions.
After all those shenanigans with the environmental process, now they want to search hikers on the trail for wag bags? This is going from outrageous to legally offensive, in my humble opinion. Welcome back when you read this, SaltyDog, hope you had a great hike.
