New Jersey parks fill up with ‘inordinate amount of urine and feces’ amid closures

Bottles of urine and feces are piling up in parks across New Jersey amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

The state reopened its parks on May 2 but kept public restrooms closed in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

What are the details?

According to a Tuesday report from Fox News, an "inordinate amount of urine and feces," stored in plastic water bottles, are turning up in New Jersey's public and state parks.

New Jersey State Police Col. Pat Callahan said that authorities are likely making such lurid discoveries as such public bathrooms remain closed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

"There is a zero-tolerance policy for that," Callahan said. "The whole idea behind the parks is to give our citizens the ability to go out there and enjoy fresh air and have time outside and that report from the park police was certainly disheartening to say the least."

Callahan added that authorities are now on high alert for people urinating and defecating in public and leaving behind their messes.

"Our park police, our counties, our state police, we will be on the watch for that," he added. "We understand that the restrooms and public restrooms are closed, but people should plan accordingly and should not be urinating in bottles and leaving them behind because I think that may lead us to take a different approach moving forward if I could speak for the governor in that regard."

What else?

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) added, "You're not going to get a warning if we catch you leaving something like that behind. So folks, please don't do that."

At the time of this writing, researchers at Johns Hopkins estimate that at least 140,206 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in New Jersey, with at least 9,340 deaths attributed to the disease.