Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Time for Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to pull plug on park, boat ramp use

During this coronavirus pandemic it is time for Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to strike the “control-alt-delete” format on the state parks system, and perhaps especially, state-operated boat launches.

Only when the danger from this death-dealing crisis is over should DeWine hit the “restart” button.

The current course of action on the part of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources toward this increasing threat is an amalgamation of wishful thinking and misplaced cheer-leading

If anything, the Natural Resources Department may have unwittingly become a facilitator for the coronavirus’ expansion.

Consider: the Department’s chief of Communications Sarah Wickham has said park visitors “need to use their common sense when they make a choice to visit one of our properties.”

We understand that people are excited to get out, but if a parking lot is full, they should go somewhere else. If a trail is too crowded, they should make the responsible decision and leave.”

Fine. Sounds logical. Makes practical sense.

Problem is, it’s not being observed. Not by a long shot.

During DeWine’s March 30th daily news briefing the Governor acknowledged that law enforcement officials around the state are alarmed as people ignore the social distancing order when visiting parks.

Even the Natural Resources Department field law enforcement officers are failing to observe this decree, setting a poor example. In the process consequently demonstrating that Wickham’s hoped-for action is really little more than a misguided public relations attempt at convincing everyone the Department is on top of things.

Late March 24th on a drive-through at Geneva State Park, my wife and I observed a Natural Resources patrol vehicle stopped in the unit’s western-most parking lot. There, another vehicle with private plates was parked alongside with the sole occupant leaning into the driver’s side window of the state vehicle, the two people’s distance measured in a fraction of the Governor’s six-foot “social distancing” requirement.


Along with that experience came the sight of numerous parties of people strolling through the park, which is fine. Except more than a few of these visitors – and there were many out on that unseasonably mild and sunny afternoon - acted as though a coronavirus threat was something that simply consumed the evening news.

No less potentially disruptive to tossing gasoline on the coronavirus fire that threatens to become a blazing public health inferno is the matter of the Natural Resources’ public boat launches.

These launches are vital for accessing fishing holes from the Ohio River through the inland reservoirs on up to Lake Erie. As to the latter, the lake’s incredible walleye bonanza has proven so tempting that anglers are more than willing to risk the invisible enemy that Governor DeWine says is stalking us all.

Consequently, these risk taking boater-anglers are crowding the pubic ramps. To assume they are all practicing a six-foot social distance circle is ludicrous.

Indeed, even the tie-up boat cleats on the walkways are themselves potential conduits for the virus. No guarantee is assumed that a person who touched such a cleat did not first swipe his face and consequently transferred virus cells to the metal cleat, thereby passing them on to the next person.

This possibility is the reasoning behind DeWine ordering playgrounds to close; how the potentially virus-contaminated slides, monkey bars and the like could become the vectors that spreads the disease from one child to the next.

No less troubling is how the allure of Lake Erie’s famous walleye fisheries (ironically touted by Governor DeWine himself) has proven a siren song for out-of-state anglers. As a result, the Natural Resources Department may have become an unintentional facilitator for the import and export of the disease into and out of Ohio.

The most recent statistic says Ohio currently has more than 4,000 licensed non-resident anglers – almost certainly many to most of whom are fishing Lake Erie. And it is this group that needs to be discouraged from coming most of all.

It is silly to believe that a collection of Wisconsin anglers will self-quarantine themselves when they return home anymore than to expect non-resident anglers visiting from Detroit will do the same once they are here.

Only a short time into the aforementioned news conference, DeWine’s well-spoken-of Director of the Ohio Department of Health, Dr. Amy Acton, pleaded with Ohioans. She requested that Ohioans think about how they engage in even essential activities where “every trip to the store” poses a risk to others and which could prolong the coronavirus’s grip on the state.

Correctly, Acton noted how “people have made sacrifices.”

We have asked kids looking for a pick-up game of basketball at a city park to stop. We have told members of the local “Y” they cannot use the swimming pool. And that folks cannot visit the movie theater, or the senior center for an art or zumba class.

Thus, we are at a crossroads. It is time for park visitors to re-evaluate their actions as to where and how they move about. If they cannot, then it is past time for Governor DeWine to tighten the restrictions on park usage until this crisis is over.

As for state-operated boat launches, they may very well become the trail heads for spreading the disease across Ohio and elsewhere. They must be shuttered.

After all, Lake Erie’s 116 million walleye are not going anywhere. They’ll still be there in May and June.


- By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@gmail.com

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