To keep the Deschutes River clean, ‘Two-ply’ goes on ‘Poo Patrol’

Jerry Christensen has a job that truly stinks.

In the canyon of the Deschutes River, where the dusty bluffs are dotted with sagebrush, Christensen is scrubbing the plastic toilet seat of an outhouse.

You can probably picture the outhouse: a classic pit-privy made of sun-bleached plywood.

On the door is a faded logo of the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that has contracted Christensen to make the weekly rounds he calls the “Poo Patrol.”

Each week, he loads his handmade mahogany drift boat with buckets, bleach, and dozens of rolls of toilet paper. He slips his boat into the river’s current at the town of Warm Springs, and winds his way north through the twisting course of nearly 50 miles to the take-out point near Maupin. The 13 outhouses he cleans along this stretch of the lower Deschutes River aren’t like any other outhouses in Oregon — they are accessible only by boat.

“Any other river it’s pack it in, pack it out,” Christensen said. “It’s the only river in the state that regularly maintains bathrooms along the way.”