Rainbows' impact a major worry

A sign on a tree said Rainbow Family members should not bathe within 100 feet of any of the area's streams. A short distance away, one of the family's multitudinous dogs, a large one, was depositing droppings within 10 feet of a stream. A young man threw handfuls of forest debris on them.

The scene Friday may be symptomatic of impacts on the environment of the Uinta Mountains created by the Rainbow gathering, which at its height on Friday drew about 9,000 hippies, street people, curious folks and musicians to the Utah-Wyoming border.

While Rainbows were making some efforts to protect nature, the sheer number of people, dogs, kitchens and latrines — and human and animal waste not in latrines — were a concern for forest biologists. So was the potential for silt in the local streams.

"The hiking trails that were created by that huge number of people in the meadow . . . will need drainage work done on them," said Becky Banker, information officer with a National Forest Service incident management team.

Although forest managers told Rainbows where to build bridges so people wouldn't be splashing through streams, and a host of small log bridges were lashed together, the runoff from people or dogs that got into streams and from eroding trails could harm the area's cutthroat trout.

The species is classified as sensitive, a stage just below threatened. The trout spawned recently. If the eggs were covered by silt from runoff, they could be smothered, said Bernard Asay of the forest's Evanston District, interviewed at the scene Wednesday.

Although signs throughout the encampment warned members not to wash within 100 feet of streams, for some the message was unclear. A "Gathering Consciousness" flier handed out told Rainbows, "Use a bucket to take your bath 60 feet away from the water sources."

"There's soil compaction on several sites, due to the kitchen, trader circle and parking," noted Banker, a Forest Service employee normally stationed in Harrisburg, Ill. As of Sunday, 4,500 remained at the site "so it's not over yet."

A major concern, Banker added, "the human waste on site. . . . Certainly the latrines themselves are a concern, but there is also a good deal of waste on the surface."

The permit signed by Rainbow representatives calls for them to perform reclamation of the site, she said. "They haven't even started that yet," so long-term impacts are unknown.