Two Philadelphia women have been sentenced in conjunction with damage they caused to a thermal feature when they left the established boardwalk last week. 31-year-old Tara Davoli and 30-year-old Sarah Piotrowski were observed on June 11th walking in the thermal area by other visitors. The witnesses confronted them in an effort to get them to stop. The women’s actions resulted in damage to the orange bacterial mats at Opal Pool in the Midway Geyser Basin. Davoli and Piotrowski each received a sentence of two days imprisonment and each were ordered to pay a $350 fine plus $106.92 restitution for damage to Opal Pool. The amount of restitution was based on a damage assessment conducted by a Yellowstone geologist and a thermal research crew. Additionally, they have been banned from Yellowstone National Park for two years and will serve two years unsupervised release.
