Perhaps we have different perspectives, I feel if you spend that much time and “public” money you should build a very versatile launch that serves a variety of peoples’ needs safely, without damaging their boats. Just my perspective.
Thanks
mjac
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The one I posted pictures of IS versatile. I can launch next to the dock. I can launch off the side of the dock. I can use the rollers if I have a rotomolded boat. I can launch off the end of the dock. I have options. I know what you are saying - and you are right - but there are also options. It’s great that you have come up with an easy replacement - have you reached out to the places in your area that need them?
I think it’s a matter of education, not malfeasance. The groups behind these installations are focused on accessibility, and are not aware of the problems. This isn’t big government, this is little government. It’s local citizens trying to do the right thing. They need education. I suspect in a lot of cases they could just remove a section or two of railing, and it would be fine. People with non-rotomolded boats need to be educated as well, and know not to use them. As I see it, the biggest issue is places where the ADA launch blocks all other options.
You feel strongly enough about this, perhaps you’d be a good person to get involved in your local area, in (gulp) local government, and have direct input.
The local municipality, trying to satisfy a federal mandate, used public money, to build a roller launch, that damages boats.
Thanks
mjac
To expand on what I hinted at before, you will get nowhere fast if you come in hot and indignant and threatening lawsuits – in fact that could easily trigger unintended consequences, including having launching completely banned at locally controlled sites. I speak from long experience, having had more dealings than most people in negotiating with local bureaucrats, having retired from 3 decades as a construction project manager as well as being a member for 50 years of a very active wilderness sports club that was often involved in access and regulation issues involving trails on public lands, waterways and rock climbing areas.
You have to understand that there are two types of people who make up the majority of local government agencies and municipal authorities. On one side you have the ambitious egotists (the king and queen bees), whose focus is more on their position being a stepping stone to the next level of public fame and fortune. They will only expedite things that make them look good, preferably what will get them a photo in the paper or a sound bite on local TV news. On the other side are the worker bees who strive to get things done – these are folks who don’t crave the spotlight and who do the day to day effort of managing red tape. Some of them are lazy and consider their jobs secure and handy as long as they don’t make waves and do the minimal effort. Since you are so fixated on “plots”, I will admit that among THAT subgroup is a small minority who will also take bribes and kickbacks – you can’t stop that but need to be aware that if you come in paranoid you will both antagonize those whose hands are clean and just harden the defensiveness of those who are besmudged by minor graft . The other group of worker bees are genuinely altruistic, dedicated to their jobs and what they see as the public good. This last cohort are the ones that get the most done, though most of the time the credit for those results the worker bees enable goes to whatever queen or king bee is at the top of their hive. In the case of these ADA docks, some worker bee(s) were directed to resource, purchase and arrange the installation, so that their boss could show up in a suit with balloons, cheering residents and press coverage to cut a plastic ribbon with giant scissors and get their mug in the newspaper.
So whether the actual installation sucks or not, somebody in that organization really thought it was a good idea and their reputation stands on it. Somebody coming in out of the blue and threatening legal action or bad publicity, especially on a minor issue, only hardens a public authority. If they feel threatened enough they will often just take the easiest option, taking their football out of the game completely. People are way more cooperative and amenable to changes if you come to them with tact and restraint. And even more so when you make it possible for them to enable IMPROVING an existing project rather than to be blamed for inadvertently doing it poorly.
I would suggest that you contact whoever was responsible for installing and/or maintaining the offending dock structure and calmly explain that, while you as a paddler appreciate increased efforts to improve public access, you suspect they may not realize that there are problems with the structure that can damage some types of boats and cause launch problems for others. Offer to meet with them to demonstrate what the issues are and also offer to work with them to determine how best to mitigate the problem. Even if they don’t mitigate and you still believe you have to get lawyers involved (and as somebody who also got dragged into long legal battles between companies I worked for and municipalities, that is always something to be avoided), you will have a stronger case if you can demonstrate that you made the local authorities precisely aware of the problem and gave them the chance to respond.
Bottom line is, the best road to getting what you want from authorities is to set things up so they themselves can look good doing it, even to have any changes appear to be THEIR idea. But if you raise too much of a stink and issue threats, it will be easier for them to just cover their asses by decommissioning the whole installation and even banning launch from the area in order to avoid any sort of “public nuisance” lawsuits.
My outing club joined with several others across the Northeast to gain or regain access to optimal recreational areas that were either closed to our access or had threatened closing. It’s a tedious and often frustrating process. We won most of these battles, but they took years, and we lost some of them, at great expense of time and legal fees.
In this case, I think the launch site “instruction” should, at least for now, include large clear warning signs that the ADA ramp may cause damage to the hulls of fiberglass, gelcoat, wood, inflatable or lightweight plastic hulls, and recommend that only molded polyethylene boats be launched from the ramp.
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Don’t you just get it…90 % of watercraft were great on these… get over it and put in someplace else
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Your perspective from your experience and I think you are sincere, or I would not take the time.
My perspective from my experience:
I was not there for this one but it is part of the history of my area. The great flood of 27. The Corp of Engineers, who at the time, was the preeminent engineering institution in the whole world, told Louisiana and the city of New Orleans the levee systems failing north of them throughout the Mississippi River Region would dissipate the flood and there was no threat to New Orleans. The Mayor of New Orleans wanting to look like a big shot, drummed up fear and said the levee had to be blown up to save New Orleans. So after 3 tries, they blew up the levee in a community called St. Bernard SOUTH of New Orleans. Not only was there no threat to New Orleans, but blowing up a levee SOUTH of what you are trying to protect serves no hydraulic purpose whatsoever. So to make himself look like a big shot, he flooded St. Bernard with 3 days notice (I believe that is correct) then he and the New Orleans business community broke their word that they would compensate St. Bernard and its people.
1965, due to the efforts of ONE man, who spent over 10 years trying to get political support, they dug the MRGO. The MRGO destroyed 40,000 acres of Virgin Old Growth Cypress Marsh Forest that was not only the most beautiful thing you have ever seen in your life, but was the City of New Orleans hurricane protection. So not only did they destroy a natural wonder they opened up New Orleans to total destruction. The Boogalese that hunted, trapped and fished that Marsh for 150 years told them exactly what was going to happen and they would not listen because they were the educated ones. Then…Katrina came along and created the worst natural disaster in the history of the country. As I said, it was the worst natural disaster in the history of the country, but the CBD, the French Quarter, the River Docks and the Uptown Area,the Sliver on the River were mostly dry. If Katrina had taken it’s expected path, that every agency in the country expected it to go, up the West side of the MRGO creating direct Southerly winds draw Gulf Water directly up the MRGO and Easterly winds drawing even more water out of the Marsh there would have been 18’ of water on Canal Street. New Orleans would have been wiped out. But Katrina took a very unexpected turn at the last minute and came up the East side.
2005-2006: The political and money interests pushed hard for large scale Mississippi River Diversions because there was money in it for Construction Contracts and phony Carbon Credits they could claim for enriching the Marsh, in which there was really big money. It would not have enriched the Marsh it would have destroyed it with the nitrogen content in Mississippi River water and it would have destroyed Breton Sound and an entire Culture and Ecosystem. If it was not for a man named George Ricks, they would have gotten away with it, he stopped them. I do not know how he did it, Diversion people were VERY well financed and had a Public Relations machine.
I am done. Time to kick ass.
Thanks
mjac
I forgot to block this clown.
And that makes it a local issue that needs to be addressed in each locality. I agree with @JCH_ski - whenever ‘the’ government is referenced it usually means the federal one. The Feds would only be responsible for ADA guidelines. Whomever constructs the launch would be responsible for the project.
A brief foray into research (we biologists can’t help ourselves) opened a can of worms. I didn’t spend much more than 30 minutes fishing around so take that into consideration. Most of the hits belonged to, you guessed it, companies that sell launch systems.
I couldn’t find any information about ADA accessibility guidelines for kayak launches at the ADA Federal Government site Chapter 10: Recreational Boating Facilities. The site deals with docks, gangways, parking lots and all sorts of things related to recreational boating but no kayak launch guidelines.
According to an undated publication from the US Forest service (https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/recreational-planning/document/udw04s.pdf), there are “…no ADA accessibility standards or guidelines for water entry point of carry down watercraft…”.
The ACA offers an Adaptive Paddling endorsement for instructors but their notoriously hard to navigate website gives no details.
That might lead to the theory that ADA compliance is being extrapolated from guidelines for other activities by companies selling ADA products. That might be the chink to sue individual companies. Calling a product ADA compliant if no guidelines have been established could be false advertising.
A class action against the manufacturers, which someone suggested, would be expensive and time-consuming so who volunteers to get that started?
I suspect that when local jurisdictions or park commissions propose installing public launches, they default to the “don’t re-invent the wheel” method and look to what others have already done. That, of course perpetuates the problems if other localities haven’t been advised their instillations aren’t living up to the intended purpose.
I commensurate about damaged kayaks, but the anger isn’t constructive. I think it was @willowleaf maybe who pointed out that legal action against local jurisdictions could backfire and result in the restriction or outright ban on launch use. Public access is already contentious enough. Besides there’s probably some waiver that says you use the launch at your own risk.
The solution is for kayakers to be involved at a local level so they hear about these projects during the proposal phase and can be proactive in guiding the decisions.
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Yes, that is the best option. We did that here in Pittsburgh after word got out that a favorite undeveloped access point along the Monongahela River was going to have a paddler access ramp built by the city. They had previously built one a little bit upstream of a power boat loading ramp on the other side of the river some miles downstream and it was a disaster for us kayakers. We had to carry boats down a steep narrow path that would get muddy and slick and which was encroached on both sides with poison ivy, then when we reached the water they had “reinforced” the bank slop with 8" square rough ashlar blocks that were not only uneven and hard on hulls but had such large gaps between them that people were getting their feet stuck in them while trying to walk into the water to launch without damaging their boat. I almost twisted my ankle myself one time and saw another paddler lose a rafter sandal that got caught. Within a few months of this “dedicated kayak access” opening, we paddle boaters pretty much abandoned it and by now, 15 years later, the path has grown over and the treacherous stone ramp has a collection of debris and flotsam collected over it.
So when we heard about the plans for the other ramp and saw the design drawing of the proposed installation, which was equally terrible in the same ways as the one we had abandoned downriver, some of us contacted the city and asked to be involved in the plan before it went further. As a result we got a safe and usable installation, with the small parking area expanded and leveled with gravel plus a wide concrete-paved, gently sloping path from there to the river’s edge, with a grassy border on both sides and brush removed, then a gradually sloping concrete ramp into the water with shallow lateral grooving in it for traction that extended far enough that you could walk your boat in and mount it afloat while having your feet on a solid surface below.
Some other regional launch sites that have gotten user input in our area got permeable plastic grids embedded in the bank access which are easier on hulls, retard bank erosions and eliminate having to wallow in mud to launch. Others, particularly in the more popular recreational areas which have power boat ramps, have had the bank slopes on one or both sides of the docks and concrete ramps re-graded and cleared of rocks and trees with sand brought in and maintained with a large cleared grassy slope above for loading and readying for launch.
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You make a statement in your opening sentence, “ And that makes it a local issue that needs to be addressed in each locality.” Then you go on and refute your own statement. In quite logical fashion you detail how these Launches were conceived, designed. manufactured and promoted by manufacturers on a national level and presented and sold to municipalities across the nation as a way to meet some yet to be defined ADA standard. This was not locally initiated projects by each individual municipality, this was part of a national marketing campaign by manufacturers of boat ramps.
Thanks
mjac
Government agencies should know what they are doing and shouldn’t need to have their hands held to get something done correctly. Lead, follow or get out of the way.
Government bureaucracies can’t be experts in everything, nor should they be expected to be. They should (and the most responsible do) reach out to the appropriate constituencies and communities for input when they plan public installations. This is particularly true when trying to serve “minority” groups like people with disabilities and those with uncommon recreational hobbies.
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Read my comment at 85 about government competence.
Thanks
mjac
Not really interested in your grumpy opinions about government competence.
You’re welcome.
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That my boy are not grumpy opinions, that is historical fact, as any intelligent person could discern.
You are very welcome.
These companies are not holding a gun on any local jurisdictions and forcing their products to be used. They are marketing something they see as a valuable product in the current climate of opening the outdoors for all people.
Perusing a few of the business sites, I found that they consult with various ADA-involved groups and athletes when designing these launches and are quite explicit that they design to the customer’s needs and budget. All of the sites offered different versions of launches from the smooth ones you like to submerged wooden planks to the ones pictured in this thread. EZ-Launch seems to be one of the more favored brands unfortunately. Bet it’s also one of the least expensive.
Any project proposed must go through local zoning, permitting and review processes, often including environmental impacts such as the Safe Harbor Act. While these companies will do their best to get the bid, it is local people who make the decision. Knowing the budgetary constraints of local governments, you can bet the least expensive design will be favored.
Further (emphasis added) “ The ADA (Title II) prohibits state and local government agencies, departments from discriminating against people with disabilities in their programs, services, and activities. The state, cities and towns must make reasonable modifications to their policies, practices, and procedures to allow equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities to participate…”.
This is why local involvement is key. Having trusted, level heads as community resources leads to good decisions that better serve the community. Marketing campaigns often crumble when well reasoned arguments are made by the taxpayers who not only elect the local officials, but will be using the proposed equipment.
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Lobbyfare (your local officials), not lawfare : ).
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All reasonable and logical points, worthy of further discussion and even debate. But the relevant point here and it is relevancy that matters, is that these national manufacturers designed and built a roller launch that damages boats. Because a local municipality decides to buy their product does not dissolve the manufacturer of that responsibility, whether someone was holding a gun to their head or not. The manufacturers are still liable for designing a faulty product that has done harm. That tort has been upheld countless times.
Thanks
mjac
A nice lawsuit or political pressure makes them listen a whole lot better, trust me.
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mjac
How do you know that? First hand?