NARROWSBURG, NY — A bear attack might make the network news, but the fact is that more people die of drowning in the national parks than from any other cause.

An Internet search of the most dangerous parks will reveal that both the Upper Delaware (UPDE) and the Delaware Water Gap have made “10-most” lists in various publications.

Some 400 people, about 30% of all deaths at national parks since July of 2013, have been drowning deaths, UPDE Ranger and safety coordinator Kevin Reish told the Upper Delaware Council (UDC) on April 6.

Those numbers prompted NPS to create a public health model for service-wide training. The numbers have also brought a lot of attention to safety efforts taken at UPDE, Reish said. “They’ve incorporated a lot of things we had already been doing.”

Sixty-eight people have drowned in the Upper Delaware since the NPS began managing the river in 1980. Deaths still occur in most years, but their number has been reduced. Senior members of local rescue squads will recall regular double-digit drowning seasons in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Boating death numbers began to decrease when NPS started requiring access to life-jackets for all in each vessel, life-jacket use by children 12 and under, and by all boaters in high water and difficult rapids. Now NPS estimates an average of 60% life jacket usage at UPDE, compared with an 11% average nationally. “No one has ever drowned while wearing a properly fitted life jacket,” Reish said.

Livery operator Dimitri Zaimes suggested more lives would be saved if the park superintendent required boaters’ life jacket usage at all times.

Livery operator Rick Lander said life-jacket usage is easy to enforce in (spring) high water, “but when you have two-feet in 90° temperatures, it’s tough.”

NPS has a continuing public education program, employing public-service radio announcements and print media, river signage and lawn signs, all reinforcing the importance of life jacket use.

More recent river drowning deaths result from swimming mishaps, involving people who have left their craft to swim or campers who misjudged the river’s current, depth or width. The average drowning victim is still a male, aged 18 to 30, as has been the case for decades.

In other business, the UDC directed a letter be written to the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) seeking clarification of the status of permitting for natural gas drilling and whether a moratorium actually exists, or whether applications be accepted for review.

They also approved a letter to the “Decree Parties,” governors of the five basin states, warning of the economic and environmental implications of their failure to reach agreement on renewal of the Flexible Flow Management Program (FFMP), which expires on May 31. And they approved a related letter to the chair of the DRBC’s Regulated Flows Advisory Committee, calling for a public meeting to clarify what is going on with interstate negotiations on a new FFMP. Local experts have argued that failure to reach an agreement and the consequent reversion to the Revision 1 flow regime could have dire consequences (see the op-ed page in our March 7 issue, https://tinyurl.com/m8m7vot).

The council also debated the need for river height gauges on all river bridges (NPS policy is signage only upstream of access areas) and directed preparation of a letter to the NY-PA Interstate Bridge Commission, which has its annual meeting upcoming; and renewed their request for a decision from New York City on the council’s request for an early warning system for dam failures. The city’s most recent response listed a 12- to 18-month wait for engineering recommendations.