Utah officials focus on boating safety

WANSHIP — Utah State Parks officials are cracking down on safety on the water this summer.

The agency uses 70 patrol boats for rescues, helping with disabled vessels and to enforce the law for the more than 73,000 registered boats in the state. This year, there have already been eight boating- or rafting-related fatalities in the state, versus four in 2008.

Dave Harris, boating program manager for Utah State Parks, was at Rockport Reservoir in Summit County over the holiday weekend. A recent patrol program at Lake Powell called Operation Dry Water found an average of 1.5 violations per boat among 120 that were visited, he said.

Harris stopped boats for infractions like missing registration decals, improperly displayed flags to indicate skiers were in the water and not having observers in the boat when someone is skiing. He doled out some citations and warnings.

"We thought just having the flag up was good enough," said boater Shannon Richardson, who got a warning but wasn't cited. "But it makes sense that it should go up and come down."

Some safety violations happen because boaters don't keep up with changes in requirements and forget to replace equipment like expired fire extinguishers. Other problems arise because people borrow boats without knowing the laws.

"We would much rather educate boaters than write a bunch of tickets; that's not our goal," said Rockport State Park Manager Joseph Donnell.

Compliance with the law requiring all children 12 and under to wear a life jacket and having one for all people on the boat is high, Donnell said. But he said he's worried about a trend he's seen for people to bring very young babies on trips.

"It has become a little bit of a situation. I'm seeing really young kids like 2 months old and the excuse is that they don't make life jackets that size," Donnell said. "They do make them, it is just a matter of finding them. The consequences of a child that age going overboard are obvious."