Paul Hayward wrote: Moral of the story: Look to your local legislatures and their ideas of how to protect you from yourself... We paddlers in Illinois recently went through an Alice-in-Wonderland experience with such a silly set of regulations. It is a very long story which I hope I can summarize accurately. We have a lot of low-head dams here and people drown at them every now and again. A kayaker went over one such dam in 2006. Two brothers who tried to rescue him and the paddler all drowned. The Illinois legislature passed a resolution charging the Dept. of Natural Resources to devise rules for dam safety. Most of the dams in the Chicagoland area have portage ramps built on their sides so a paddler can walk safely around the dams. In their wisdom, the DNR proposed rules which made it illegal to approach within 300 feet of a dam. All the portage ramps are less than 200 feet long. So, it would be illegal to use the safety ramps, meaning no one could take long paddling trips on rivers with dams. The DNR had some hearings. I went to one and almost everyone there said the ramps were perfectly safe. I talked about how I had timed the river going over the dam in Geneva, Illinois. [I teach at the Geneva Kayak Center which is literally right at the top of the ramp around the dam, so I am very familiar with this dam.] I timed the current going over the dam at flood stage, when the river was the highest it had been in a hundred years. From the bottom of the ramp to the edge of the dam, it takes just over a minute. That means the flood current is exactly 1.25 miles per hour. Not exactly a killer flow. If someone missed the bottom of the ramp, they would have a minute to regroup before getting to the dam. Among other things this silly rules set required was signs and lights posted above the dam on private property. The signs would have to be purchased by the property owners from the DNR. We paddlers, and the property owners above the dams, organized a fierce letter and email-writing campaign and got the legislature to refuse to approve the regulations as written. A quirk in the law means the issue is dead. But it was close. And none of our comments at the hearings were able to convince the risk-averse DNR (they own the dams and, so, are liable for any claims resulting from accidents) to change the rules to at least allow the use of the existing safety ramps. Jim Tibensky *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Oct 09 2009 - 06:13:35 PDT
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