 
|
|||||||||
              
|
No-wake proposal creates waves
Friday, November 10, 2000 By Marylynne Pitz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Power boat owners and rowers often call the city's three rivers the "Pittsburgh pool."
The pool seems cramped right now and churned by dissent. Rowers and kayakers weary of crashing wakes favor expansion of a low-wake zone for three miles from the Point on all three rivers while power boaters oppose it.
The proposal will be debated again Monday when the design team for the Riverlife Task Force offers its latest riverfront plans for public review and comment. Plans will be presented in South Meeting Room 2 of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, at 3:30, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m.
Davit Woodwell, task force executive director, said accommodating all users of the city's rivers is a balancing act similar to managing a national forest where loggers, oil and gas companies, hikers, bikers, cross-country skiers and snowmobilers lay claim to the same land.
"I think we can all get along," he said.
Nearly 100 boaters opposed to the no-wake zone showed up at a recent meeting sponsored by the task force and the Pittsburgh Safe Boating Council.
"They are trying to implement a no-wake zone three miles up each river from the Point," said Robert Todd, a power boat owner from Verona.
On weekends and holidays, the state Fish and Game Commission enforces a no-wake zone that forces boaters traveling between some bridges to maintain a low speed.
The rule does not apply on weekdays, said Todd, one of 100,000 Western Pennsylvanians who own registered boats.
Pat Stella of Indianola, who owns a 30-foot Larson cruiser, said yesterday that Mike Lambert, executive director of the Three Rivers Rowing Association, cannot represent the interests of power boaters while serving as co-chairman of the River Users Committee, which reports to the task force.
Lambert, who is also a member of the task force, said the committee was reconstituted recently and three men who are power boaters were appointed to it: Jim Schmitt, publisher of Anchors Aweigh magazine, Andy Talento, vice president of the Pennsylvania Boating Association, and Capt. George Boyle, treasurer of the Safe Boating Council.
"I have agreed to support whatever the power boating community feels is in its best interest," Schmitt said. He added that expansion of the no-wake zone would allow more boaters to tie up when more public docks are built.
Once a power boat generates a wake, the waves have nowhere to go after slamming against hard, sheer, shore walls on the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers. Roiling water creates a bathtub effect that can cause damage to boats tied up at marinas or upset boaters trying to dock and go ashore.
"We like to call it boiling, the water is so churned up. It's very hard to navigate and it's hard to tie up your vessel," Schmitt said.
Of the 100 people who attended the Oct. 26 meeting at the Three Rivers Rowing Association at Washington's Landing on Herr's Island, Schmitt said, all but two raised their hands when asked if they opposed a no-wake zone.
"It was a pretty feisty group, but they gave a lot of input," he said.
If the no-wake zone is expanded, power boaters claim that going up and down any of the three rivers will take two hours, round trip.
Schmitt believes it makes more sense for boaters to go "full plane."
"When your boat's up out of the water, it gives off a very low wake," he said.
"The biggest offenders are the boaters who slow down to that 25 mph speed. We call that plowing through the water. The bow is way up. The stern is plowing into the water. Don't they ever look back behind their boat and see what they're throwing off? That one escapes me."
Schmitt doubts that the no-wake zone will become a reality.
"I don't think it's likely to happen -- not anytime soon, if ever. I think the power boaters will continue to make their position well known."
|
||||||||
