News

May 31, 2010

Pa. park beaches to open without lifeguards

The move is not based on economics, the state says, but some see a problem.

The Associated Press

HARRISBURG— Lifeguards are returning to work this summer at Pine Grove Furnace State Park’s Fuller Lake — but that’s one of only two lake beaches in Pennsylvania’s state parks that will get them.

The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources in 2008 eliminated lifeguards at all state park public beaches except for Lake Erie’s Presque Isle State Park. Lifeguards were added to Fuller Lake after a teenager drowned there in July of that year. Lifeguards remain at pools in state parks.

Agency spokesman Chris Novak said the decision was made “for reasons of operating more efficiently, providing greater access to public beaches.”

But Chris Brewster, president of the U.S. Lifesaving Association, called it “an extremely unwise decision that placed saving money over public safety.”

Novak said the lifeguards cost the parks more than $800,000 per year, but the decision wasn’t about a recent cash crunch but part of a 10-year program begun in 1998 to phase out lifeguards at 58 of the 59 beaches.

There have been three drownings at state parks since 1998, two at guarded beaches in 1999 and the last the 17-year-old who drowned at Fuller Lake in 2008 while visiting with a Bucks County youth group home, according to DCNR statistics.

Novak said state parks are able to leave “swim at your own risk” beaches open later in the year, since lifeguards were often high school and college students and beaches struggled to stay open when the students left in August to go back to school. A 2008 report by the state auditor general’s office critical of the decision said 34 states have unguarded beaches. Twelve of those states never used lifeguards and five removed them since 2000. The report said California and Connecticut reported an increase in drownings when lifeguard use was limited.

The auditor general also cited a 2005 Florida Supreme Court decision that government entities could be liable for drownings at unguarded public beaches if they do more to promote swimming than just provide access, such as putting in parking or public facilities and concessions.

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