PWCs Under Fire

Boat/US Magazine, Nov, 2000

New York Gov. George E. Pataki signed into law legislation that allows local governments to regulate the use of personal watercraft (PWC) up to 1,500 feet from shore on New York's waterways. The legislation allows cities, towns and villages to regulate or even prohibit PWCs in municipal waters following the holding of a public hearing and the adoption of a local law.

"This new law puts the power to decide what is best for a local community right where it belongs: in the hands of the people of the community," Pataki said. But the New York action is seen by some as setting a bad precedent in allowing types of watercraft to be regulated or even banned at the local level. The trend in recent years has been toward greater uniformity of boating laws, almost always at the state level.

There are more than 50,000 PWCs registered in New York, less than 10% of the registered recreational vessels in the state. The legislation takes effect this month.

Also on the PWC front, the Bluewater Network, a California-based environmental group, has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, against the National Park Service demanding that personal watercraft be banned completely from all national parks. The federal park service had begun a partial ban in some parks last April and was in the process of allowing 21 other park supervisors to conduct their own usage reviews, with public meetings, before deciding whether PWCs would be allowed. Some of the parks that were under review border oceans with many miles of beaches, such as Cape Cod National Seashore.

But the American Watercraft Association, an organization of one million PWC users, countered that the lawsuit is seeking to derail the public process and deny access to public parks for recreation.