Just when you thought SF couldn't get any lower!
Started by Robert M
Super 'Toilet' Bowl: City scorched for open-air 'pee' wall'Public urination is bad enough. Spending taxpayer money to promote it is indefensible'
San Francisco’s open-air urinal (Photo: Twitter)
Just
as America’s attention turns to California’s Bay Area for Super Bowl
50, the City by the Bay is offering open-air public urination stations –
without doors or walls – where men can do their business within
eye-shot of unsuspecting passersby.
San Francisco has spent $15,000 to build a semi-circular public urination wall, according to the Pacific Justice Institute.
“This
is a new low even for San Francisco. It is also blatantly illegal,” PJI
President Brad Dacus said in a statement. “The city has not even
attempted to comply with its own ordinances, much less state or federal
law. We intend to hold them accountable. Public urination is bad enough;
spending taxpayer money to promote it is indefensible.”
PJI
says some local residents have complained about the urination wall at
the corner of Church and 20th Streets, which is positioned right next to
a public park and public transit station.
The
urination station appears to be a semicircular wire-mesh wall with a
banner that provides minimal privacy. A drain is located in the center
of the cement floor.
The facility is visible from the sidewalk, passing trains and multi-story housing.
San Francisco’s open-air urinal (Photo: Twitter)
“Honestly,
we were ready to go pee anywhere,” San Francisco resident Aaron Cutler
told KNTV-11. “So any facility is better than none.”
PJI
said it citizen “complaints have gone unheeded,” so it is sending a
letter to city officials outlining legal concerns with its urination
station. The organization is threatening to sue if a urinal in Dolores
Park is not gone in 20 days.
The
letter, addressed to Parks Department General Manager Phil Ginsburg,
said, “The open-air urination hole violates the privacy of those who
need to use the restroom but would be required to expose their bodies
and suffer the shame and degradation of urinating in public view. Privacy is a fundamental right enumerated in the California Constitution.”
Further, “The courts have found the right to privacy to be contained in the penumbra of rights in the U.S. Constitution.”
The facility the city has created, the letter explains, is especially offensive to women and girls.
“Because
of the unique way in which females urinate, when there is no standard
toilet for which they can sit, they must lift their skirts or pull down
their pants and undergarments and squat over the hole. This exposes the
entire lower part of their bodies to the public.
“Indeed,
whether a female faces the fence toward the train stop, turns her back
to the fence, or squats sideways, she will be exposing much of her body
to the public.”
In
fact, the legal team told the city, because of restrictions on nudity,
“Urinating in the hole at the present location is an act facially in
contravention to the ... law.”
If it’s intended only for men, and not women, then it violates non-discrimination laws, the letter notes.
Further,
it falls short of legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities
Act, and the legal team noted, “Space does not permit a detailed
discussion of how the open-air urinal falls short of the requirements
under the plumbing code for public restrooms.”
And the public health could be endangered by the absence of sanitation options.
The conclusion?
“The
open-air place provided for urination is a public nuisance. It is
inconsistent with community standards, illegal, and creates a public
health risk.”
The San Francisco Observer reported that hefty $500 fines aren’t stopping people in the city from urinating in public.
“It
has real consequences to the city’s infrastructure too – last year a
streetlamp whose base was corroded by pee collapsed, narrowly missing a
driver,” the Observer reported. “The epidemic got so bad that public
works crews put pee-proof paint on walls throughout the city.”
The
letter was sent to Mayor Edwin Mah Lee as well as members of the city’s
board of supervisors and the city’s recreation and park commission.
Laura J Alcorn
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