PWC Industry Fights Park Ban

Boat/US Magazine, March, 2001

When the National Park Service announced it would ban personal watercraft (PWC) from all its parks unless the popular boats could he proven environmentally safe, the Personal Watercraft Industry Association (PWIA) came out swinging.

Following a settlement reached with the Bluewater Network which had sued the agency over its PWC policy, PWIA Executive Director Monita Fontaine said the industry and PWC users were locked out of negotiations.

Bluewater sued the agency over its policy, enacted in April 2000, which banned PWC at 66 sites but allowed continued use at 21 parks, including 10 national recreation areas where watersports had been a "primary purpose."

In the suit filed last August, Bluewater alleged that the agency violated federal law requiring NPS to "leave park resources unimpaired for future generations." Bluewater contends that PWCs damage the environment, endanger public health and safety and harm wildlife.

The settlement, announced Dec. 20, extends the ban to such popular PWC boating waters as Lake Mead National passed Cunningham's bill by wide margins. With Clinton's signature, it is now illegal in all U.S. waters to slice the fins off sharks at sea and dump their carcasses, living or dead, overboard.

"Sharks are among the most biologically vulnerable fish in the ocean," said Cunningham, an angler, avid scuba diver and BoatU.S. member. "Their populations are slow to recover from overfishing and that's why practices like finning, where 95% of the fish goes to waste, has to be stopped."

In a further victory for sharks, the new law directs the secretaries of State and Commerce to curb the growing global trade in fins, used solely for shark fin soup. The Oriental delicacy costs up to $100 a bowl in Hong Kong.

"If they succeed in banning PWC from public waters, they'll go after other motorized recreational boating," Fontaine warned. The San Francisco-based environmental group is an offshoot of the Earth Island Institute. Fontaine said the trade association would contest the settlement which, at press time, had yet to be approved by the courts.