Steve, I'm not a lawyer (and I don't play one on TV), but I see no legal reason why you can't use basic wilderness methods for human waste in the Whitney Zone. As a practical matter though, it's hard to find a decent spot to dig a cat hole anywhere above say 10,000ft, and the good holes have probably been used already. If everyone did that, the quotas would have to be reduced. That seems to be the real goal here for some people, so it would play into their hand.
George, the NEPA process was botched so badly they can't issue a Forest Order. In effect, they already admitted defeat legally, the only thing left would be for a judge to remedy the situation. Who knows what a judge would do to right the ship, but what Garry Oye did should be very disturbing to anyone who follows environmental law. Nobody drafts a lengthy and detailed 50-page EA, switches the preferred alternative during the public notice, waits years until it turns into an "emergency" and then circulates a memo disguised as a decision document that lies about overwhelming public opposition. Congratulations, Garry if you're reading this, you got your way and nobody seems to care how you did it.
The costs you cite for other lawsuits are typical, but they have nothing in common with the bizzare way that the Whitney Environmental Assessment process was mishandled. No group with skin in the process would ever let that happen in real time, and (almost) any judge would reprimand the agency acting in that manner.
As to the Wilderness Act, this thread has a great number of photos of toilets within designated Wilderness, so that argument doesn't match reality throughout the Sierras. They were used for decades in the Whitney Zone. The bigger question is why is this special zone with enormous popularity and difficult management challenges considered "Wilderness" in the first place? It makes more sense to set the boundary at Trail Crest, in my opinion.
In any case, toilets were considered compatible with Wilderness ethics under these unique circumstances for decades. This concern about Wilderness values was mentioned in the EA but it was not a deal breaker because of the history and the reality that toilets provide the best environmental protection. Apparently a trail littered with plastic bags full of human waste is the new definition of Wilderness.
