MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — A commitment toward boating safety is gaining traction in Miami-Dade County as a panel pushes to implement a set of recommendations.
The Boater Safety and Bay Education Taskforce wrapped up a lengthy look at some of the issues that contribute to fatal boating accidents in the county.
“We need safety education, rules and regulation regarding our waterways,” said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. “And the goal of this taskforce has been to not see so many tragedies that we’ve seen just in the last couple of years.”
Lucy Fernandez was a victim in one of those incidents on Labor Day weekend in 2022.
Her father, Andy Fernandez, now chairs the taskforce along with a number of other county leaders.
The group highlighted a need for increased boater education, better legislation and waterway management to focus on.
“What we’re trying to do is expand boater education requirements, to see how we could expand it here at the local level where more boat operators are required to obtain more boater education requirements,” said Fernandez. “We want to help obtain more funding for law enforcement.”
A final report stated “a persistent and alarming trend is the lack of formal training among vessel operators.”
As a result, the taskforce is now pushing mandatory training for operators and passengers and increased accountability through law enforcement efforts to deter unsafe and impaired boating.
In addition, new legislation to closes regulatory gaps for long term improvements and a sharp improvement in waterway management to shore up navigational guides and traffic patterns.
“Some of those signs are old, they’re faded,” said DERM Director Loren Parra. “We can’t ask people to follow the rules if they can’t see them, so we want to make sure we’re doing that, of course working with all of our different municipalities to strengthen all of our marine patrol.”
The information has officially been submitted to the county, and the next steps will be for county leaders to work to implement the recommendations as policy.
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