Cancel toilet contract, city told

The naysayers may have been right: Seattle's multimillion-dollar, high-tech public toilet program looks like a washout.

Some city officials, including the city's wastewater utility director, want to remove the five automated, expensive and controversial toilets next year.

The large, self-cleaning lavatories went into service in 2004 -- three years after the City Council used a rare show of force to authorize the program as an alternative to less attractive portable toilets.

Since then, the five stalls have cost taxpayers about $4.3 million. The money came from a tax on wastewater rates that cost the average single family household about $2.59 per year on an annual sewer bill of $465.

A recently completed report found the unattended toilets have been well used -- both as they were intended, and as a refuge for drug use and dealing, booze drinking and prostitution. Some homeless people now avoid the toilets because of the social problems they attract, the report found. Meanwhile, there's been a steady increase in how much human waste crews clean each day in downtown alleys and walkways.

The report by Seattle Public Utilities also found the single-stall units required relatively large quantities of water, while offering a tiny fraction of the service available in some traditional public bathrooms. And, despite their automated cleaning functions, they are sometimes dirtier than traditional public bathrooms.

On Monday, Seattle Public Utilities recommended the city cancel its contract for the facilities early next year. In the meantime, officials hope to find other ways to help tourists, residents and the public find access to other safe, clean restroom facilities.

"It's a disappointment. I was hopeful that these would work, that they'd be successful," said City Councilwoman Sally Clark. "We're at the point now where we have enough data where we can say we should be done with it and take them out."

"I, and the rest of my colleagues, have heard a lot from businesspeople, residents, visitors, who have found the automatic public toilets to be unsafe, unavailable, broken, dirty -- you name it."

If the council and mayor agree to cancel the contract next year, as Seattle Public Utilities recommends, keeping the five toilets online until then will likely cost almost another $800,000 in lease, maintenance, repair, administrative and other costs. After that, the city could end its contract by paying a cancellation fee of nearly $491,000 plus $250,000 in toilet removal costs.

Once the toilets are gone, the city could save about $850,000 annually in lease and operations costs. But no one has proposed using that money to reverse the tax boost that funded the toilets.

Rather, the utilities department and others have suggested using the money to improve access to traditional restroom facilities, perhaps with contracts with privately owned facilities, expansions of publicly owned restrooms and installing signs directing tourists, shoppers and the homeless to existing public toilets. Right now, Seattle has no such signs or maps.

While the utilities department and some officials agree any solution will likely require hiring attendants to staff at least some public toilets, that alone does not appear to be enough. The city closed a five-stall public bathroom in late 2004 because of drug and prostitution problems -- despite staffing it with such an attendant.

The five self-cleaning, unisex toilets are located at Victor Steinbrueck Park near Pike Place Market, Pier 58 at Waterfront Park, Occidental Park in Pioneer Square, Hing Hay Park in the International District and 1801 Broadway on Capitol Hill.

The Capitol Hill location is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The other facilities are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day. On average, 85 to 124 users a day visit the toilets.

The busiest facility is the one at Steinbrueck Park. But, like the other automated toilets, it offers "margin value," the report found. In the 13 hours it's open each day, it can serve up to 195 visitors daily, city officials estimate. By contrast, the 23 stalls and urinals at the two nearby Pike Place restrooms have a maximum capacity of 11,903 users in an 11.5-hour day.

Also, the cost of operating that automatic toilet last year was nearly $130,000. Pike Place Market operated its nearly two dozen stalls or urinals for $200,000.

The five high-tech toilets have a sink and a hand dryer, and pneumatic doors that slide open like those on an elevator. After each use, the toilet flushes two to three times before the toilet seat retracts and is pressure-washed and dried, according to the report. Meanwhile, the slightly sloped floor can also be washed and drained, although that function was disabled by the city because of excessive litter, the report said.

Whenever the stalls are used and cleaned, 3.6 to 7.6 gallons of water flush down the drain. Typically, a visitor to Pike Place Market bathrooms only uses about 1.7 gallons, including hand-washing.

By the time the toilets were authorized in 2001 through an unusual council veto override, the idea of installing such toilets had already been the topic of years of Seattle political debate. It was even fodder on the City Hall campaign trail.

Some warned back then that such facilities would become a haven for illicit uses. At the time, "automated public toilet" supporters and officials with Seattle Public Utilities said the community would make sure that didn't happen. If one location did become a problem, SPU said, the city could adjust the maximum occupancy time.

Officials did try that when problems cropped up. And the city added lighting and closed most of the toilets overnight. It wasn't enough to control the problems.

Still, "the council made the right call at the time by trying this out. ... It was a good experiment," said Clark, who was not yet on the council. When the council's budget committee approved the toilets in July 2001, Councilman Richard McIver cast the lone dissenting vote. McIver said then he could think of more pressing needs for the money.

The council nonetheless went on to approve the facilities. And after then-Mayor Paul Schell vetoed the plan, council members overrode the veto and pushed ahead.

In late 2006, others on the council also publicly questioned whether the toilets were working out. A downtown group has found that people are actually relieving themselves on the streets 30 percent more often since the facilities were installed. And Seattle Public Utilities recommended the city rethink its "very expensive investment."

In response, the council directed the utility late last year to prepare the report evaluating the success of the high-tech toilets.

"I was right," McIver said Monday. "There are neighborhoods who have been trying to get rid of these things for years. They tend to encourage ... behavior that' s not good social behavior."

As he did several years ago, McIver acknowledged again a need for public restrooms. "There's a desire to provide a comfortable rest stop for people," he said. "The question is, 'How do you assure that behavior is legitimate?' "