Don’t Blame The Jet Boats – Blame The People Who Want To Ride Them

A  Commentary by Doug Draper

Those jet boats roaring up and down the white-cap waters of the Lower Niagara River are making news again.

A citizens group along the lower Niagara River shows their opposition to the river being used by jet boats. File photo

It’s been a long time since I have read or heard much from anyone on either side of the Ontario/New York State border about noise, erosion and other environmental impacts they say us caused by these powerful vessels as they race loads of tourists through the whirling waters of the lower river.

Then this past September 10^th, on the front page of The Buffalo News, was a story about the jet boats, featuring complaints from residents on both sides of the river about noise and damage to docks and other property they say the boats are leaving in their wake.

For those unfamiliar with the history, the jet boats have been speeding up and down the lower river since a company called Whirlpool Jet Boat loaded the first one with passengers on the Ontario side in Niagara-on-the-Lake more than 20 years ago.

Since then, the thrill of the boats’ powerful engines, jetting mostly tourists through surf churning so wildly that once only dare devils plied them has proven so popular that another company, Niagara Jet Adventures, has joined in offering them out of Youngstown, New York.

Those who earlier approached local governments and sometimes the courts to protest the presence of the jet boats won the odd concession from their operators but the boats pick up load after load of passengers and zoom on.

And they sure do zoom LOUD! At one point, about a decade or so ago, I was touring the Niagara Glen – a spectacular nature area below the steep walls of the gorge on the Ontario side where paths wind through weathered boulders and centuries-old trees to the river’s rapids – with a guide from the province’s Niagara Parks Commission.

The Niagara Glen is about as close to an undisturbed sanctuary of green as you can find in this greater Niagara region and at the risk of sounding a bit mushy, it is hard not to get into worshipping the place (just as one might be moved to worship in a church) when you are there.

That is until all of the exaltation is shattered by the roar of a jet boat’s engines that send every native bird perched in every tree in the vicinity bolting skyward while a guide on the boat bellows to passengers through a bullhorn as they laugh and scream as if they were on a rollercoaster ride.

I’m not sure how hard anyone ever tried making a case against these jet opponents on the grounds that the Niagara River was designated by conservation experts a few decades ago as a globally important bird area and that the river and has also been mapped as an ecosystem of special concern by the Canada/U.S. International Joint Commission.

But even if a case for protecting the river’s natural features wasn’t put forward forcefully enough or was not made at all, is it really necessary to go through a formal process to figure out that there is something perverse about taking one of the great natural wonders of the world and turning it into an amusement park.

A number of years ago, group protesting the continued presence of the jet boats hung a large banner from the U.S. side of the Niagara River gorge reading; “Jet boats Suck!” It is the jet boats that suck? Jet boats are just machines.

Maybe what really sucks are the people who have so little appreciation for a magnificent place like this that they have to turn it into a Disney-like theme park.

I can’t help feel that there is something fundamentally warped about a society or culture (and I am speaking in general now since I know there are at least a few of us “tree huggers” out there) that can’t simply stand aside and enjoy a river and falls that together make up one of the world’s greatest natural wonders.

Aside from the good efforts the U.S. State Park System has done to preserve Goat Island in Niagara Falls, New York and the Niagara Parks Commission has made to preserve areas like the Glen on the Ontario side of the Niagara River, the age-old drive to invade, conquer and dominate – too often for crass commercial purposes – too often rules.

It is a drive that appears to go back at least as far as the Book of Genesis – “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth.” – and perhaps and despite any and all efforts by some to have us living in more harmony with our natural surroundings, it will continue until, one way or another, humans go the way of the dinosaurs.

To read the September 10th, 2015 story in The Buffalo News on the jet boat issue click on –  http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/lewiston-porter/boaters-are-making-waves-about-jet-boats-on-the-niagara-river-20150909  .

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