Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Legislators consider airboat regulations
TALLAHASSEE – The airboating death of a University of Miami graduate, just a day after her graduation, has prompted the Florida Legislature to consider new regulations on the many airboat operators who take tourists into the Everglades.
Ellie Goldenberg, 22, graduated May 12 with a theater degree and died in an airboating accident the next day in Miami-Dade County.
Airboat operators on navigable waterways are required to abide by federal law. But out in the Everglades, and in landlocked bodies of water around the state, oversight falls to state laws, which have so far offered few requirements.
Operators born before Jan. 1, 1988 don’t even need to take a boating safety course.
Under a bill (SB 1612) unanimously approved by the Senate Environmental Protection and Conservation Committee on Monday, airboat operators would have to carry at all times a photo ID and proof of completion of airboat-operator and CPR/
first aid courses, along with proof of having taken a boating safety course if they were born after Jan. 1, 1988.
People issued a captain’s license by the U.S. Coast Guard would be exempt from the last requirement but would have to have their license on board the airboat.
This was the bill’s first hearing in committee. It still has two stops in the Senate and has not yet had a hearing in the House, where it’s a big issue for sponsor state Rep. Joe Abruzzo, D-Boynton Beach, who attended Goldenberg’s graduation ceremony, where his cousin also graduated.
The original bill hit airboat operators with a second-degree misdemeanor if they didn’t comply with the law, but that was downgraded to a noncriminal infraction and $500 fine at the committee hearing Monday.
“That signals to the courts, that signals to the law enforcement officers out there with a ticket book and pen that the Legislature puts a very low priority on this,” said Alan Richard, a 34-year veteran of Florida Marine Patrol and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who now teaches admiralty law at Florida State University. “You’re signaling that this is not important to you.”
Senate co-sponsor Lauren Book, D-Plantation, said the change came at the behest of committee chairman Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island.
“I think it makes a good bill better. One of the things we’ve been focusing on in the Senate is not creating new crimes,” Bradley said. “Jail’s not the answer for every ill our society faces. So that was the thought and the motivation behind my request.”
Book maintained that, regardless of punishment, the law, if passed would still send a message that airboat operators need to have a certain degree of professionalism.
“This is about keeping folks safe that are on airboats,” she said. “This is about this young woman that tragically lost her life and making sure that we take the steps that we can to ensure that people are safe.”
In 2016, there were 714 boating accidents reported in Florida, according to a staff analysis of the bill, and 67 boating fatalities. It’s unclear how many involved airboats, but 70 percent of all boating accidents that year involved operators with no formal training in operating their vessels.